Russia says it struck oil refinery that supplies Ukrainian army with fuel

Russian forces carried out an overnight strike on the Kremenchuk oil refinery that supplies fuel to Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the attack on the central Poltava region as a vile strike against Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

“Unfortunately, there was damage to the energy infrastructure,” Zelenskiy said in his evening address to the nation.

“This is Russia’s (effort to) spit on everything that the international community is trying to do to stop this war.” He said it occurred “after the Americans asked us not to strike at Russian energy facilities.”

The Russian defence ministry’s statement said that missiles had been fired at the refinery in Ukraine’s Poltava region from both sea and air and that strike drones were also used in what it said had been a successful attack.

Russia has claimed Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region as its own and controls most of its two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine is fighting to stop Russia from taking control of the rest of Donbas and has said it plans to retake territory it has lost, through a combination of force and diplomacy.

The Russian Defence Ministry said separately that its forces had taken control of the village of Malynivka in the Donetsk region, known in Russia as Ulyanovka.

It also said its forces had advanced deep into enemy defences in Ukraine’s Sumy region and inflicted heavy losses on Ukrainian units there. Sumy is not one of the regions Russia has formally claimed as its own, but it has spoken of creating a buffer zone there.

Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured Andriivka village in northeastern Sumy as part of a drive to expel Russian forces from the area.
He said Russia has amassed 53,000 troops in the vicinity.