Russian forces launched a new series of air strikes on Ukraine on Sunday night, attacking its territory with more than 200 attack and decoy drones. Most of them were shot down, the AFU Air Force said (source in Russian), but 14 drones were recorded hitting 11 locations.
“According to preliminary data, as of 08:30, the air defence intercepted 212 enemy UAVs of Shahed, Gerbera, Italmas and other types of drones in the north and east of the country,” the agency said.
According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (source in Russian), a drone of Russian forces struck a company site in Chernihiv region in the north of the country. A 58-year-old man died there. As a result of the strike, a fire broke out in the car park and 7 lorries were destroyed by fire.
The target of the Russian strike was another non-operational enterprise in Rivne region, also in northern Ukraine, according to local authorities. The head of the Rivne regional administration, Oleksandr Koval, said (source in Russian) people were not injured, according to preliminary reports.
The air attack on Dnipro, in the south-east of the country, sparked a fire in the city. A warehouse of a logistics company caught fire there. All in all, according to the regional administration (source in Russian), Russian troops carried out about 20 drone and artillery strikes on Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were injured.
As a result of the strikes, a kindergarten, a medical office, several apartment and private houses, as well as farm buildings were damaged, and there was a fire on the territory of an agricultural enterprise.
Ukraine asks for air defence missiles
In total, Russian forces fired more than 2,300 attack drones, about 1,560 guided aerial bombs and 108 missiles of various types at Ukraine this week, Ukrainian President (source in Russian) Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media (source in Russian).
“All these strikes are just on ordinary civilian infrastructure – residential buildings, energy,” the Ukrainian president clarified, repeating a call for Western partners to supply Kiev with missiles for air defence systems to have enough capacity to repel Russian attacks.
According to Zelensky, Ukraine received an IRIS-T surface-to-air missile launcher from Germany on Saturday.
“Every day we are working to have more defences against Russian terror. Yesterday we received a new IRIS-T launcher. We thank Germany for its continuous contribution to the protection of people. Thousands and thousands of lives have been saved thanks to such strong support,” Zelensky said.
“We are counting on both the US and European partners. It is the anti-ballistic defence that is one of the key priorities for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian president continued. – Strong air defence can give more protection for our people and deprive Russia of its last advantage.”
Fires at Russian refineries
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones again attacked oil infrastructure in various regions of Russia.
In the Saratov region, an oil refinery, one of the largest in the Volga region, was hit. The refinery, which is part of Rosneft, has a design capacity of about 7 million tonnes of oil per year. Regional governor Roman Busargin said (source in Russian) that civilian infrastructure was damaged in the attack, but did not give details.
The AFU General Staff and Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force confirmed the attack and fire at the refinery (source in Russian).
“On the night of May 31, operators of the 1st separate centre of the Unmanned Systems Forces in cooperation with the SDF and the Main Directorate of Intelligence, as well as other units of the Ukrainian Defence Forces, successfully struck the Saratov oil refinery,” the agency said in a statement.
In the Kirov region, Ukrainian drones attacked the Lazarevo linear production and dispatch station, which was set up to transit oil to central Russia. This was reported by monitoring channels. The head of the region, Alexander Sokolov, however, reported only about the morning drone attack on (source in Russian) “an enterprise on the territory of the Urzhum district,” without naming the enterprise. According to the governor, “there is a fire, there are no victims or casualties.”
Ukraine’s special operations forces confirmed the information (source in Russian), indicating that they “hit a key node of the largest oil pipelines from Siberia to Europe.”
“Located almost 1,200 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, the Lazarevo LPDS in the Kirov region is a key point of the Surgut-Polotsk oil pipeline,” the agency said (source in Russian). – This artery transports oil from Siberia and northern Russia to the Baltic ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Belarus.
The station also connects to the Druzhba trunk pipeline system, the SSO said, which allows oil to be quickly pumped between the two largest oil pipelines in the European part of Russia.
In the Rostov region, a fuel storage facility caught fire after a drone strike. InMatveevo-Kurgan districta fuel storage facility of a private enterprise supplying agricultural producers caught fire due to falling UAV debris, regional governor Yury Slyusar said (source in Russian), adding that a pharmacy, two shops and a car were also damaged there.
Ukrainian forces said they were referring to the Agroprodukt oil depot in the town of Matveev Kurgan – it stands almost close to the border with Ukraine and houses large tanks, road and railway loading terminals and a loading station.
The defeat of the enemy’s oil refining and logistics infrastructure reduces its economic ability to wage war against Ukraine, the AFU SSO stressed (source in Russian).
Earlier, Western news agencies noted that after a series of Ukrainian attacks, almost all major oil refineries in central Russia were forced to halt or reduce production.
Situation at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant
Meanwhile, Kiev denied Russia’s claims that a Ukrainian drone had struck the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the largest in Ukraine and Europe.
Russian forces seized the plant in the first weeks of the war, and it remains near the front line in the southern Zaporizhzhya region, one of four nuclear power plants that Russia has officially annexed despite the lack of full military control or international recognition of its actions.
Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom said on Saturday that the drone exploded, blowing a hole in the wall of the turbine hall. The company’s chief executive Alexei Likhachev accused Ukraine of a “deliberate” attack.
The Ukrainian military denied the claim, calling it “another propaganda ploy” by Russia, pointing out that they did not strike the nuclear power plant and that it was not their target. “There were no active hostilities on the relevant section of the front line at the time of the incident and no weapons were used,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed “grave concern” after the incident in a publication on X.
The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant has been shelled repeatedly since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, raising fears of a nuclear accident.