KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces struck a major natural gas processing plant and two key satellite communications centers in their latest nighttime attacks on Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said Wednesday.
The operation was part of Ukraine’s aerial campaign targeting energy facilities and military industries that has intensified as Kyiv builds bigger and better long-range weapons to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion, now in its fifth year.
In response, Moscow has ordered the redeployment of some air defense systems from Russian regions to the capital and to Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, a crucial link for supplying Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The bridge connects the Crimean Peninsula with the Russian mainland.
“It is important that as many Russians as possible come to understand that it is the Russian leadership’s rejection of diplomacy that is prolonging the war,” Zelenskyy said on X.
Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump but Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused.
In northern Ukraine, meanwhile, military officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for communities and settlements in the Chernihiv region bordering Belarus starting July 1, according to Viacheslav Chaus, the head of regional military administration, in a statement on his Telegram channel.
Last month, Zelenskyy said his intelligence services had learned Moscow recently stepped up efforts to “draw Belarus much deeper into the war” and launch operations from Belarusian territory. He said he ordered the military and security agencies to prepare a response and strengthen northern defenses. Belarus and Russia denied Zelenskyy’s claim.
Ukraine says the stricken gas plant was among the world’s largest
The overnight attack hit the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant, which is part of a complex that also houses the only helium plant in Russia, the General Staff said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The attack set the complex on fire, it said.
Orenburg, in the southern Urals near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, is more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) behind the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The plant is one of the largest gas complexes in the world, according to the General Staff. It produces helium, used in liquid-fuel rocket engines and guidance systems, and ethane, a key component in producing solid rocket fuel and gunpowder, it added.
Overnight attacks also hit two satellite communication centers used by the Russian military, according to the General Staff.
One was the Dubna Space Communications Center near Moscow, which it described as Russia’s largest ground-based satellite communications complex, and the other was in the Vladimir region east of the capital.
It was not possible to independently verify the General Staff’s report, and Russian officials made no immediate comment.
The General Staff’s statement did not say whether the military used drones or missiles in the assault, but drones have recently been used to strike Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Ukraine keeps hammering Crimea
Ukraine has recently focused its drone and missile attacks on Crimea, aiming to cut off the vital Russian-held peninsula, and overnight drone strikes knocked out power in Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the city’s Moscow-installed governor, said Wednesday.
Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, sits in a strategic location on the Black Sea. It has naval bases and also provides an important supply line to Moscow’s forces inside Ukraine.
Ukraine recently destroyed more than 60,000 tons of Russian ammunition when it hit a Baltic Fleet arsenal near St. Petersburg, Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine is trying to disrupt military supply lines in Crimea and strike the peninsula’s power grid at the height of the summer tourist season. Kyiv hopes the campaign will embarrass Putin and increase public pressure on him to end the war, according to Western analysts.
Ukraine’s Security Service said Wednesday it struck two military airfields and destroyed missile systems in Crimea.
Attacks kill at least 6 people
Two staff members of Norwegian People’s Aid were killed during a Russian attack in Ukraine, the demining organization said Wednesday, although local officials said only one person was killed.
Four other workers with the organization were injured, two of them critically, according to the head of the southern Kherson region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Russian forces shot down 323 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.
Two people were killed and two others wounded overnight in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, regional Gov. Gleb Nikitin said. Also, a Ukrainian drone strike killed one person overnight in Russia’s Belgorod border region bordering Ukraine, local officials said.
Ukraine’s air force, meanwhile, said Russia launched 101 long-range attack drones overnight.
Russian drones attacked the city of Balakliia in northeastern Ukraine, killing a 56-year-old woman, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration. Also, a 57-year-old streetcar driver man died as a result of a Russian guided aerial bomb that hit the outskirts of Sumy, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the regional military administration.
In addition, the death toll rose to four from Tuesday’s ballistic missile strike using cluster munitions on Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s hometown, after a 62-year-old woman died from her injuries, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, said.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have deployed the controversial munitions during the war.
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Elise Morton in London contributed.
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