Sept 22 (Reuters) - Russia killed four people in strikes on Ukraine’s industrial heartland overnight, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday, hours before President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to meet US President Donald Trump at the United Nations.
Moscow stepped up airstrikes over the summer, and has been attacking economic targets ranging from businesses and ports to logistics hubs, with its advances on the ground largely stalled more than 4-1/2 years into its war in Ukraine.
“Russia deliberately targets businesses, farms, warehouses, railways, energy facilities and residential buildings,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said on Telegram.
Ukraine has also increased long-range strikes in recent months, targeting Russian oil refineries and big online retailers in an effort to undermine Moscow’s war effort.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it had hit a Russian oil refinery in the city of Ufa, more than 1,300 km (800 miles) from the border with Ukraine. It also said it had struck the Kuibyshev oil refinery in the Samara region on the Volga river.
The Samara region governor said Ukrainian drones hit civilian targets in the region, killing one person and injuring four. Both sides deny targeting civilians.
Trump said last week that Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to strike energy targets, but any semblance of a truce disappeared when Russia hit petrol stations in Kyiv the following day and Ukraine bombed a Russian oil refinery.
STRIKES ON THREE INDUSTRIAL CITIES
Continuing its attacks on Ukraine’s economic infrastructure, Moscow simultaneously hit industrial enterprises in the cities of Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and Pavlohrad in the southeastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram.
The region is home to machine building, steel-making and other major production.
A Russian missile strike on a facility in Dnipro owned by Interpipe, Ukraine’s largest pipe producer, killed four people and wounded seven, the company said.
Koretskyi said 13 Ukrainian regions and the capital Kyiv were hit in the overnight attack that stretched into Tuesday morning.
The Russian barrage included an unspecified number of Oniks anti-ship and ballistic missiles, as well as four cruise missiles and 212 drones, Ukraine’s air force said.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces hit industrial and military facilities in Ukraine, targeting the fuel and energy sector as well as port infrastructure facilities and sea vessels serving the Ukrainian military.
OIL AND GAS FACILITY HIT
Businesses were also damaged in Pavlohrad and Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskiy’s hometown, Hanzha added.
A Russian attack on an energy facility in a neighbouring region cut power supplies to nearly 100,000 consumers in the northern region of Chernihiv, an electricity distributor said.
Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz said at least five ballistic missiles had hit idle technological facilities at an oil and gas site in the central region of Poltava. The attack caused critical damage and in effect makes it impossible to restore and operate the facility, it said.
The facility, which it did not name, had been a frequent target of Russian drone and missile attacks since 2022, it said.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had hit an oil refinery in the city of Kremenchuk in the Poltava region.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Timothy Heritage)
