CNN — Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia in an overnight attack targeting an oil facility serving a military airfield in the city of Engels, nearly 400 miles from the border, Ukraine’s military said Wednesday.
Ukrainian officials reported a huge fire at the Kombinat Kristall oil depot, which provides fuel to the Engels-2 military airfield in the Saratov region, where Russia’s strategic bomber fleet is located.
At least two Russian firefighters were killed while responding to the fire, Roman Busargin, governor of Saratov region, said in a post on Telegram Wednesday. Another specialist was hospitalized, Busargin said.
Images geolocated by CNN showed large balls of flames lighting up the night sky and plumes of smoke continuing to billow from the site on Wednesday morning.
“The destruction of the oil depot raises major logistic challenges for the strategic aviation of the Russian occupiers and significantly reduces their ability to strike at peaceful Ukrainian cities and civilian objects,” Ukraine’s military said.
Long-range drone strikes have played a prominent role over nearly three years of war between Russia and Ukraine. As land warfare has become more attritional, Kyiv has increasingly taken the battle to the skies and enjoyed considerable success, seeking to disrupt Russian logistics, damage its weapons stockpiles and set its oil facilities ablaze.
Wednesday’s attack is not the first time Ukraine has targeted Saratov, the main city of which lies more than 600 kilometers (375 miles) from the Ukrainian border, although Russian air defenses had mostly thwarted previous attacks.
Busargin confirmed that the cities of Saratov and Engels suffered a “massive” drone attack overnight, which he said had caused damage at an industrial site. Ukraine’s military said this site was the oil depot at the Engels-2 airfield.
Russia’s defense ministry said its air defenses had intercepted 23 Ukrainian drones in the overnight attack, including 11 drones over Saratov and four over the Kursk region – where Ukraine has renewed its counterattack after snatching a large pocket of Russian territory last summer.
The ministry did not say how many Ukrainian drones evaded air defenses in Saratov, but Ukraine’s military reported “numerous explosions” in the region.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the drones used in the long-range attack had been made in Ukraine.
Last year, CNN was granted exclusive access to one of Ukraine’s long-range drone units, which operates under Ukraine’s defense intelligence and has conducted hundreds of attacks on Russian soil since the war began in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Russia fired 64 drones at targets in Ukraine overnight, according to Ukraine’s air force. It said it had shot down 41 of the drones and that 22 others did not reach their targets. It did not account for the one outstanding drone in its count.
Later on Wednesday, Zelensky said that at least 13 people were killed in a Russian strike on the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine. Dozens of others were wounded, he said on Telegram.
The overnight attacks come as both Ukraine and Russia have redoubled their efforts to shift the frontlines, perhaps with a view to the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House and the prospect of peace talks. Trump has previously said he wants to end this war in a day, without saying how.
Russia’s defense ministry on Monday said it had captured the eastern town of Kurakhove in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, as it circles in on the key strategic city of Pokrovsk. Kyiv has cast doubt on Russia’s claims, however, saying fighting continued in Kurakhove on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has launched a fresh offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, where it has been holding territory since its shock incursion last summer. Ukraine’s military on Tuesday said it struck a Russian command post near the town of Belaya, as fighting raged on several fronts in the region.
