Ukrainian drone strikes ignite refinery and seaport in southern Russia

A Ukrainian drone attack on an oil refinery in the southern Krasnodar region early on Friday ignited a fire that was later brought under control, while authorities in the nearby city of Taganrog ordered the evacuation of residents from their homes following a separate strike on a seaport that set two fuel depots ablaze. The Ilsky Oil Refinery, which has a production capacity of approximately 138,000 barrels per day and has been targeted on several previous occasions, caught fire after drone debris fell onto the facility, with officials also reporting that debris had struck at least one residential property and a commercial site. A few hours after the incident, local authorities in Krasnodar confirmed that the blaze at the refinery had been successfully extinguished, though the attack underscores the continued vulnerability of Russia's energy infrastructure to Ukrainian aerial operations.

In the neighbouring Rostov region, Governor Yury Slyusar wrote on Telegram that fires had broken out at two fuel depots in the Taganrog seaport during a drone assault, with Taganrog Mayor Svetlana Kambulova subsequently confirming that residents living in proximity to the port were being evacuated from their homes. The mayor added that a house had been damaged in the attack and that the roof of a government building had also caught fire, though further details about the extent of the destruction were not immediately available. The strikes on Taganrog, a port city on the Sea of Azov, represent the latest in a series of Ukrainian operations targeting logistical and energy infrastructure across southern Russia, as Kyiv seeks to disrupt supply chains supporting Moscow's war effort.

Meanwhile, in the western Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine and has been subjected to repeated cross-border attacks throughout the conflict, officials reported that a woman had been killed in a drone strike on her car, the latest civilian casualty in a region that has borne the brunt of Kyiv's operations against Russian territory. The Russian Defence Ministry, in its daily operational update, claimed that its forces had intercepted a total of 376 Ukrainian drones across Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula between Thursday night and Friday morning, a figure that, if accurate, would represent one of the largest single-day interceptions of the war and suggests a significant intensification of Ukrainian aerial activity. The ministry did not provide a breakdown of where the drones were downed, nor did it acknowledge any successful strikes on Russian infrastructure, maintaining its longstanding practice of reporting only defensive successes.