Ukraine-Russia war live: Fire breaks out at Russian oil refinery after Kyiv drone attack

Russian Telegram channels reported a blaze ripped through the Kuibyshev oil refinery in the country’s Samara Oblast region after local residents said they heard an explosion, according to local reports, with regional authorities saying the cause was a drone.

It comes as Moscow launched what Kyiv has called the biggest attack of the war on Ukraine’s power grid in retaliation for recent strikes targeting oil refineries and other energy facilities inside Russia, signalling a potential escalation of the war just days after Putin cemented his grip on power in a preordained election.

Russia pounded Ukraine’s power facilities on Friday, striking a vast dam over the Dnipro river, killing at least five people, leaving more than a million others across seven regions without electricity, and briefly cutting off power to a nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia that has been a safety risk throughout the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram that the “technical possibility for electricity supply” had been restored in most affected regions, but that the situation in the eastern Kharkiv region remained difficult.

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