3 May (Reuters) – Ukraine launched a wave of drone attacks against targets across Russia this Sunday, hitting the Primorsk port on the Baltic Sea, causing a fire at the site, and damaging several vessels, as it intensifies attacks on energy infrastructure and other targets.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks caused significant damage to the port, used as a terminal for oil transport. They also hit a tanker, a small Karakurt-class Russian missile ship and a patrol boat in the Baltic Sea, Zelensky said on Telegram.
‘Each of these results further limits Russia’s military potential,’ he wrote.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the northwestern region that houses the port, said that more than 60 drones were shot down overnight. He stated that the fire in Primorsk, an important oil export point, was quickly extinguished and that there was no oil spill after the attack.
Among the numerous reports of other attacks in other parts of Russia, the Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that a drone hit a car, killing a 21-year-old man and his father.
‘PHANTOM FLEET’ AS A TARGET
Primorsk, one of Russia’s largest export hubs, has the capacity to handle 1 million barrels per day of oil. The port has been hit several times in recent months, as the U.S.-brokered talks to end the war in Ukraine have stalled.
Zelenskiy said on this Sunday that Ukrainian forces also hit two tankers of the ‘phantom fleet’ at the entrance of the Russian port of Novorossiysk, in the Black Sea. This fleet is made up of ships that seek to sidestep Western sanctions on Russian vessels.
‘These tankers were being actively used to transport oil — no longer,’ Zelenskiy said on Telegram. ‘Ukraine’s long-range capabilities will continue to be developed comprehensively — at sea, in the air, and on land.’
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that global oil prices could rise further if Ukraine continues to strike Russia’s infrastructure, Russian TV reported.
‘If additional volumes of our oil are withdrawn from the market, prices will rise even further relative to current levels, which are already above US$120 per barrel,’ Peskov said. ‘That would mean that, even with lower export volumes, our companies would make more money and the state would receive more revenue.’
The Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said on Saturday night that a 77-year-old man had died in a village after a drone attack. And Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, said that four drones were shot down on the way to the Russian capital.
Vasily Anokhin, the governor of the western Smolensk region, said that three people, including a child, were injured on Sunday after a drone attacked an apartment building in the region.
Meanwhile, Russian troops were advancing toward the city of Kostiantynivka, in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, said the top Ukrainian army official on Saturday.
