Russian high-precision land and sea missiles destroyed a refinery and three fuel depots in Odessa

The Russian Army has destroyed a refinery and three fuel depots in the last 24 hours, that of Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine and the largest in the country, and that of Odessa, a strategic port city in the south that had not yet received major attacks.

The first attack occurred last night, according to Dmitro Lunin, head of the military administration of the central Poltava region, on his Facebook account, who indicated that the infrastructure has been “destroyed” and that some people suffered burns, although their lives, he added, are not in danger.

In his message, he indicated that due to the damage the plant is not operational and reported that a fuel warehouse at the airport has also been damaged in Mirgorod. The Russian Defense Ministry has announced that it used “long-range, high-precision weapons” to attack the refinery, “which supplied Ukrainian troops in the center and east of the country.”

According to the Ukrainian newspaper “Ukrainskaya Pravda”, the Kremenchuk refinery was the largest in Ukraine and had a capacity of 18.6 million tons of crude oil.

This attack was followed this morning by a second refinery, that of Odessa, located in the north of this city on the shores of the Black Sea, where an oil pipeline arrives from Russia and passes through Kremenchuk.

The impact of several Russian missiles on the infrastructure has not yet caused casualties, as reported by the colonel of the Southern Operational Command of the Ukrainian Army, Vladislav Nazarov, on the official Telegram account of the Odessa City Council.

The Southern Air Command also reported that this morning the anti-aircraft units of the Ukrainian Army shot down two launching cruise missiles by Russia from the sea.

The attack on the Odessa refinery occurred around six o'clock in the morning local time and the explosions (at least six of different intensity) were felt kilometers from the site.

As Efe has found, four columns of black smoke have been raised from the refinery complex visible from all over the city.

Several of the missiles have landed on fuel tanks, causing flares several tens of meters high and intermittent explosions.

Tatiana, who lives in an apartment in a two-story building about fifty meters from the door of the facility, explained to Efe on the spot that she has heard six explosions, four of them in the refinery area and two more a little further away.

“We heard a rumble and jumped out of bed,” he added, pointing to the windows of his windows, all broken by the shock wave. Another neighbor, Sergei, has felt the attacks as “an earthquake” from his home, located on a hill several hundred meters from the infrastructure.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has also reported this attack in its morning part, in which it claims that Ukrainian troops fighting on the front lines in the neighbouring city of Mikolaiv, some 130 kilometers east of Odessa, were supplied from the refinery and where missiles have also fallen today.

The attack, Russia claims, occurred “with high-precision naval and ground missiles” targeting the refinery and three fuel tanks.

Since the beginning of their invasion, Russian troops have prioritized vital infrastructure and airports among their objectives, nor is it the first time they attack hydrocarbon deposits.

The city of Lysychansk, in the Donbas, in the east of the country, suffered this week a bombardment that caused dozens of injuries and the burning of an oil refinery.

Another Russian missile strike also hit a crude oil depot in the Dnipropetrovsk region of central Ukraine in recent days.

Fuel tanks in Lviv, in western Ukraine, were also hit by Russian bombs coinciding with US President Joe Bien's visit to neighboring Poland.

With information from EFE

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