Ukraine Claims Fresh Hit on Russian Energy Infrastructure

Ukraine said its drones struck the largest Russian gas processing plant in the Orenburg region, which also processes gas from Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak oil and gas condensate field. 

Long-range UAVs successfully hit the Orenburg gas processing plant, about 1,050 miles (1,700 km) east of Kyiv, said a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified as the information isn’t public. The information couldn’t be independently verified. 

Orenburg region Governor Evgeniy Solntsev said in a Telegram post that drones attempted to target an industrial facility in the region, which he didn’t name, and that infrastructure there sustained minor damage. 

Ukraine has widened the scope of its attacks on Russian energy assets, targeting not only crude refineries but also pipelines and, increasingly, terminals for seaborne oil exports and shadow fleet tankers carrying Russian supplies. Coupled with international sanctions on some key Russian producers, the strikes have made seaborne exports of the nation’s barrels more challenging logistically.

The strikes come as the US continues to push for a ceasefire in the conflict, which will reach the four-year mark in February. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that differences remain between Kyiv and Washington on territorial issues and on management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that Russia seized early in its 2022 full-scale invasion. 

The Kremlin is reviewing information delivered to President Vladimir Putin by his envoy Kirill Dmitriev after weekend talks with the US in Miami, and will decide on further contacts with the US based on the president’s decision, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media on Thursday.

The Orenburg gas processing station was previously targeted in October, temporarily affecting oil and gas output at neighboring Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field, which cannot maintain normal oil production rates when gas output is disrupted. The design capacity of the Orenburg plant is 45 billion cubic meters per year.

Kazakhstan already faces lower oil output after a recent drone attack damaged a mooring at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in Russia’s Novorossiysk, which Kazakhstan uses to ship crude from one of its largest oil fields for export. 

Gazprom and the Kazakh energy ministry didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg requests for comments on the Orenburg strike.

Ukraine also targeted the seaport of Temryuk in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, with two oil tanks burning and emergency services working to extinguish a fire covering about 4,000 square meters (43,000 sq feet), local authorities said. 

Separately, Ukraine’s Air Force attacked the independent Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s southern Rostov region with Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles, the General Staff said on Telegram. The scope of the damage is being clarified, it added. 

Firefighters are working to extinguish a fire at the site of the explosions, Rostov region Governor Yuriy Slyusar said, without specifying which facility was damaged.

The refinery, which was also targeted earlier in the year, can process 5.6 million tons of crude a year, or about 110,000 barrels a day, compared with Russia’s total crude processing rates of more than 5 million barrels a day. The facility didn’t immediately respond to a Bloomberg request for a comment.

In Ukraine, authorities introduced emergency power outages in the Black Sea city of Odesa on Thursday following a series of Russian strikes, local authorities said. At least one civilian was killed and two injured, and local port and industrial infrastructure were damaged.  

Kremlin forces have repeatedly targeted Odesa, Ukraine’s third largest city with a pre-war population of about 1 million people, in recent days.

“Odesa suffers the most these days,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X. “Russia deliberately destroys energy and civilian infrastructure, leaving people without power, water, and heating amid freezing temperatures.” 

In all, almost 500 Russian drones were downed across Ukraine overnight, authorities said. A civilian was killed in the Kharkiv region and another in the Chernihiv region in Ukraine’s north, Sybiha said. 

Poland’s armed forces operational command reported that one of its fighter jets “intercepted, visually identified and escorted a reconnaissance aircraft of the Russian Federation” flying near Polish airspace.   

Separately, Polish authorities observed objects, most likely smuggling balloons, entering Polish airspace from Belarus. The objects were monitored and local airspace was closed to civilian traffic for a time.