Ukraine has reportedly been using drones to attack targets inside Russia. The New York Times reported that US intelligence believes Ukraine was behind a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month. However, Ukraine has not publicly acknowledged launching attacks against targets inside Russia. On Saturday, Russian media reported that Ukraine struck oil pipeline installations deep inside Russia with a series of drone attacks, including on a station serving the vast Druzhba oil pipeline that sends Western Siberian crude to Europe. The Tver local council said that a drone had crashed near the village of Erokhino, around 500 km from the border with Ukraine. In the Pskov region of Western Russia, two drones caused an explosion that damaged an oil pipeline’s administrative building. The incident occurred near the village of Litvinovo, less than 10 km from Russia’s border with Belarus. A construction worker was killed near the border with Ukraine in the Kursk region due to shelling from Ukraine.
The Druzhba pipeline, built by the Soviet Union, has capacity to pump more than 2 million barrels per day but has been severely under-utilised after Europe sought to reduce its dependency on Russian energy after President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine last year. Transneft, Russia’s oil pipeline operator, said earlier this month that a filling point on Druzhba in a Russian region bordering Ukraine had been attacked. The Ukrainian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Reuters could not immediately verify the reported attacks.
