KYIV: Kyiv said on Monday its forces had struck a large oil terminal overnight on the occupied Crimean peninsula as Moscow claimed the capture of another village in east Ukraine.

Kyiv has ramped up strikes targeting Russia’s energy sector in recent months aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow to fund its invasion, now grinding through its third year. “At night, a successful strike was carried out on the enemy’s offshore oil terminal in temporarily occupied Feodosia, Crimea,” the Ukrainian military said in a post on social media.

Russian-installed authorities in Crimea said a fire had broken out at an oil facility in the Black Sea port town of some 70,000 people and that there were no casualties.

The defence ministry said that 12 Ukrainian attack drones had been downed over the peninsula overnight, out of a total of 21 deployed by Kyiv against Russian targets.

Kyiv intensifies strikes targeting energy sector in recent months, aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow

“The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transhipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army,” the Ukrainian military said, vowing to continue such attacks.

Ukraine insists the strikes are fair retaliation for Russian attacks on its own energy infrastructure that have plunged millions into darkness. Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile claimed the capture of a village in eastern Ukraine close to the strategically important city of Pokrovsk.

Missiles target Kyiv

The defence ministry in a briefing said it captured the village of Grodivka, a settlement in the Donetsk region near Pokrovsk, as Russian troops close in on the key logistics hub. The settlement with an estimated pre-war population of around 2,000 is the latest in a series of towns in the Donetsk region to have fallen to Russian forces, as they push towards Pokrovsk.

Last week, Ukraine’s army said that it had withdrawn from the mining town of Vugledar also in the Donetsk region, handing Russia one of its most significant territorial advances in weeks.

In a wave of separate attacks on Monday, Ukrainian authorities said three civilians had been killed in overnight Russian attacks — two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region.

The governor of Kherson later said a Russian strike on the town had wounded 19 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings were damaged.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2024