Ukrainian drones struck three oil refineries in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday. The refineries “process millions of tonnes of oil each year” and are located nearly 1,600km (994 miles) from Ukraine, Ukraine’s president said. The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set on fire an oil refinery in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan.
A sanctioned Russian container ship, the Yanina, sank in the Black Sea after being hit by Ukrainian drones, Zelenskyy said, listing the ship as among “facilities that sustain the war effort”. Russia’s state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, whose shipping subsidiary FESCO operates the vessel, claimed the ship was carrying “civilian goods” such as frozen food and construction materials.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost off-site power for nearly two hours – the 23rd time it has happened since the full-scale Russian invasion. The plant is illegally occupied by Russia and not operating, but needs power supplied from outside to power cooling systems that maintain the safety of its nuclear materials.
