This week, fighting continued to rage all along the front lines with some of the most intense battles being fought in the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions in the country’s east. Russia has seized Velyka Novosilka in the south of Donetsk region, according to DeepState, a Ukrainian OSINT project. The intensity of Russia’s offensive operations declines, but is still at high levels, it added.
Russian drone strikes have become a nightly occurrence in most of the country. Drones hit critical infrastructure in western Ivano-Frankivsk region overnight on Monday. In the region of Dnipro, a drone attack hit critical infrastructure sites, apartment buildings, private homes, and an industrial site. Russia launched 100 drones at Ukraine overnight on Tuesday, causing damage in seven regions. A drone crashed into an apartment building in Sumy during a Russian nighttime attack on Thursday, killing nine people and wounding at least 14 others. A Russian attack on Kramatorsk, in Donetsk region, wounded 13 people, including two young children.
Ukraine has intensified strikes deep inside Russia. On Sunday, Ukraine destroyed more than 200 Shahed drones in an attack on warehouses in Russia’s Oryol region. A Ukrainian drone attack later in the week hit Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station and a missile storage site in the Tver region.
In other news, Russia oil trade to China and India has stalled as sanctions drive up shipping costs, according to Reuters. Finland has developed an extended-range drone for Ukraine. Diplomatic efforts toward peace should come in lockstep with “peace through strength” principle, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said in a resolution passed at the winter session.
Ukraine drones hit one of Russia’s largest oil refineries. An oil refinery in the Russian region of Volgograd caught fire after an overnight Ukrainian drone strike on Friday. Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, confirmed the attack. He said the facility was Russia’s sixth largest with a declared refining capacity of around 14 million tons a year. Earlier this week, Ukraine’s military claimed to have struck Lukoil’s oil refinery in Kstovo, within the Nizhny Novgorod region, in an overnight drone attack.
