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Belgorod City Hall was damaged in a drone attack on Tuesday.
CNN
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Ukraine has launched nighttime drone attacks on three oil refineries deep in Russia, Ukrainian defense officials say, as Kiev steps up cross-border attacks days before President Vladimir Putin's expected re-election. told CNN on Wednesday.
The official told CNN that Ukraine “is implementing a well-planned strategy to reduce Russia's economic potential.”
The three targeted Russian refineries are located in the city of Ryazan, about 130 miles southeast of Moscow. Kustovo is in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 300 miles east of the capital. and Kirishi in northwestern Russia. The three facilities are among Russia's largest refineries, officials said.
Ukraine's attack on a Russian energy facility marks the second day in a row, marking the latest in a series of attacks on Russian territory.
“Our goal is to deprive the enemy of its resources and reduce the flow of oil money and fuel that Russia uses directly for war,” the source told CNN.
They came after a chaotic day on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border. Meanwhile, a group of pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters announced that they had launched a cross-border offensive and claimed to have captured the village of Chotkino in Russia's Kursk region.
The village remained under fire “all day” Wednesday, the local governor said.
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The Belgorod border region bore the brunt of Ukrainian cross-border attacks during the war.
The fallout from the attack continued into Wednesday. The Russian Freedom Corps, a Russian opposition group fighting for Ukraine, has previously claimed responsibility for the Russian invasion, but in a series of posts on Wednesday Telegram, the group said its fighters had attacked Chots in the Kursk region. They announced that they had destroyed the command center in Kino Village. They had reached the area and were moving forward.
CNN cannot independently verify the group's claims. However, CNN was able to locate video footage posted by the group showing a building in Chotkino engulfed in smoke and flames.
“There was a control center, but there is no control center,” the group said. “We are bringing the bloody regime's defense industry closer to crisis.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that Ukrainian air defense forces had destroyed 58 Ukrainian-made drones overnight, including one that flew as far as the Leningrad region, which borders Finland, and Kiev. This supported the claim.
Ryazan Governor Pavel Markov said a fire broke out at a facility in the region, but it was now under control. He said two people were injured.
Social media videos from one of Russia's largest refinery complexes showed large plumes of smoke billowing from buildings in the distance.
In the previous day, Russian authorities reported at least 25 drone attacks, and local officials in the Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions reported attacks on fuel and energy facilities.
No casualties were reported from the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday.
However, Russian authorities said there was an apparent cross-border infiltration on Tuesday, with attacks launched in the village of Odnolobovka in Ukraine's Kharkiv region and the villages of Nehoteyevka and Spodariushino in the neighboring Russian villages of Belgorod.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia's Belgorod region, announced on Tuesday that 10 civilians were injured in the region and six were hospitalized.
In the neighboring Kursk region, the Russian village of Chotkino was under fire “all day long” on Wednesday after pro-Ukrainian groups claimed to have taken control of the village, the region's governor Roman Starovoit said. .
Buildings and stores were reportedly damaged.
“As soon as it is safe to do so, door-to-door searches will be carried out in the village. We will ensure that all owners of damaged properties are supported in their repair,” Starovoit said.
The latest attack in Kiev not only targets Russia's deep oil reserves, but is also partly intended to remind Russians of the war's impact as the country prepares for presidential elections. There is a possibility that there are.
The vote almost guarantees Putin a fifth term in office and extends his rule into the 2030s. Voting will take place over three days starting Friday, and the president will sail toward a new position in power in a vote that will be neither free nor fair and will not be viewed as truly competitive.
In a lengthy interview on state TV channel Russia 1, President Putin said on Wednesday that Ukraine's attacks on Belgorod and Kursk come amid a “failure” on the Kiev battlefield.
“All this is happening against the background of failures on the front line of contact. They failed to achieve any of the goals they set for themselves last year,” Putin said. “In the backdrop of these failures, at least something needs to be shown, and attention should primarily be focused on the intelligence side of the issue.”