Copyright kyivpost
Ukraine’s Special Operation Forces (SSO) have claimed a successful hit on oil facilities in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region on Monday. In thermal drone footage released by the SSO, drones are seen flying toward oil tankers positioned along railroad tracks, followed by scenes of flames raging through the night, captured by thermal cameras. The SSO said the attack took place overnight between Sunday and Monday in the occupied Luhansk region. It did not specify the exact location of the strike. “On the night of Oct. 27, units of the Special Operations Forces successfully struck at the facilities of the Russian army. The fuel and oil depots were located in the temporarily occupied territory of the Luhansk region of Ukraine,” the SSO wrote in its update. Officials from the occupied Luhansk region confirmed that two fuel depots were hit overnight, alongside other facilities. “The attack damaged administrative buildings, several fuel trucks, and fuel tankers. Employees were promptly evacuated, and there were no injuries,” Andrey Eliseev, deputy minister of fuel, energy, and coal of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), was quoted as saying in an update by Russian independent media Astra. The latest strike appears to be part of Kyiv’s months-long campaign to hit Russian oil facilities near and far behind the front, cutting into Moscow’s oil revenue and disrupting its logistics. In mid-October, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told Kyiv Post it had struck multiple strategic targets in Russian-occupied Crimea overnight, including the Feodosia Marine Oil Terminal and several key electricity substations. Earlier the same month, satellite imagery confirmed a fire at the largest gas processing plant in Russia’s Southern Federal District – where most of the facility’s output is produced for export – after an alleged Ukrainian drone strike.
