Russian attacks hit coal mine in Dnipropetrovsk region and Chernihiv power grid; Trump flips back to accommodating Putin. What we know on day 1,335
Ukrainian drones struck the giant Orenburg gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire and forcing it to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan, according to both Russian and Kazakh authorities. The plant is run by Russia’s state-owned Gazprom company and located in a region of the same name near the Kazakh border. It is part of a production and processing complex that is one of the world’s largest of its kind with an annual capacity of 45bn cubic metres. It handles gas condensate from Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field as well as Orenburg’s own oil and gas fields.
The Russian regional governor, Yevgeny Solntsev, said drone strikes set fire to a workshop at the plant and damaged part of it. The Kazakh energy ministry on Sunday said Gazprom had notified it that the plant was temporarily unable to process gas originating in Kazakhstan “due to an emergency situation following a drone attack”. Ukraine’s general staff said a “large-scale fire” erupted at the plant and one of its gas processing and purification units was damaged.
A separate drone strike hit Russia’s Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, in the Samara region near Orenburg, sparking a blaze and damaging its main refining units, Ukraine’s general staff said. It is operated by Rosneft and has an annual capacity of 4.9m tonnes, turning out more than 20 kinds of petroleum products.
