Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russian territory on Sunday, hitting the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk — Russia’s largest oil-exporting terminal — and targeting what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of tankers used to evade Western sanctions.
A nighttime drone strike ignited a fire at the port, Leningrad regional Governor Alexander Drozdenko said on Telegram. The facility, operated by the state oil firm Transneft, lies over 1,000 kilometers from Ukraine and can handle hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. Drozdenko said the attack did not cause an oil spill but gave no further information about casualties or damage.
In a separate Telegram post, Zelenskyy asserted that Ukrainian forces had destroyed a Kalibr missile carrier, a Karakurt missile ship, a patrol boat, and a tanker he called part of Russia’s shadow oil fleet. “One more Russian carrier of Kalibr missiles is out of action,” he said, attributing the operation to Major General Yevhen Khmara. He also claimed strikes on two additional shadow-fleet tankers near the entrance of the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. “These tankers were actively used to transport oil. Now they won’t,” Zelenskyy said, crediting the operation to the chief of Ukraine’s general staff, Andrii Hnatov.
Moscow did not immediately acknowledge the claims.
Kyiv has intensified attacks on Russia’s oil export infrastructure in recent months. Ukrainian officials argue that oil revenue directly finances the full-scale invasion of their country, which began more than four years ago.
Elsewhere, Russian drones struck Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight, killing two people and wounding three others, Ukraine’s Emergency Service reported. The attack damaged three residential buildings and struck port infrastructure, causing a fire that emergency teams later extinguished. Nighttime Russian strikes also wounded six people in the Dnipropetrovsk region; a passenger bus carrying 40 children was damaged, though no one inside was injured, the agency said.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike near the town of Volokolamsk, about 120 kilometers west of Moscow, killed a 77-year-old man, regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov reported. He said six drones were shot down in the Moscow region, while Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported at least five more destroyed on the approach to the capital. In the western Smolensk region, drone debris that flew into an apartment block injured a man, woman, and child, according to Governor Vasiliy Anokhin.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said a total of 334 Ukrainian UAVs were downed overnight over Russia and occupied Crimea. The Ukrainian Air Force, in a Facebook update, reported that Russia attacked Ukraine with 269 drones and ballistic missiles; Ukrainian forces shot down and repelled 249 drones, while ballistic missile strikes and 19 drones reached targets in 15 locations.