Ukraine hits Russian refineries as Moscow strikes train station, ship

Ukraine struck two Russian oil refineries hundreds of kilometres from the border in an overnight attack, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, as Russia hit a train station and commercial ship in Ukraine.

Both sides have been intensifying their long-range attacks in recent months, leading to a jump in civilian deaths.

Kyiv has been firing record numbers of drones at Russia, while Moscow has been launching all-time high missile attacks.

Zelensky said Ukraine had hit oil refineries in the Bashkortostan and Yaroslavl regions -- about 1,300 (800 miles) and 700 kilometres from the front.

The attacks were "strengthening the prospects for diplomacy", Zelensky said.
"Russia must choose peace," he added, posting a video from Russian social media of black smoke rising above an oil facility.

Russia's defence ministry said earlier it had downed 605 Ukrainian drones in the night.

A man walks past burned out cars that went up in flames during a recent Russian strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Reuters

The governor of the Yaroslavl region -- north of Moscow, where Zelensky said a refinery had been hit -- said 92 drones had been downed there in what he called the "most massive" attack on the region of the war.

In the Tver region, also north of Moscow, a drone hit a logistics centre belonging to Wildberries -- the Russian e-commerce giant that has been heavily targeted over the past month.

Russian missile attacks on Kyiv a day earlier had killed at least 17 and destroyed warehouses belonging to a number of retailers in what was widely seen as a direct response to Ukraine's campaign targeting Wildberries, widely dubbed "Russia's Amazon".

Kyiv was unable to down any of the missiles Russia fired, prompting urgent calls from Zelensky for air defence supplies.

Fresh Russian attacks overnight killed two people at the Lozova train station in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

A commercial vessel carrying Ukrainian wheat was also hit in the Black Sea by Russia, killing one person, the Odesa region governor said.

More than four years after the start of Russia's large-scale offensive against Ukraine, diplomacy is at a standstill and the two countries are ramping up long-range strikes, causing a growing number of civilian casualties.

Agence France-Presse