Ukraine war briefing: Strikes on Russia’s Primorsk oil port and ships

Zelenskyy says three ‘shadow fleet’ vessels hit along with guided missile corvette; Ukrainian drones menace Moscow and surrounds. What we know on day 1,531

Ukraine on Sunday launched a wave of strikes against Russian oil targets, hitting the key port of Primorsk on the Baltic Sea and three ships that Ukraine alleges were illegally used to transport Russian crude. A night-time drone strike started a fire at the Primorsk port, the Russian regional governor confirmed. The port, operated by Russia’s state oil firm Transneft, is capable of handling hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. Primorsk, which was targeted multiple times in March, lies over 1,000km (620 miles) from Ukraine, between the Russian-Finnish border and Russia’s second-largest city of St Petersburg.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that as part of the operation against Primorsk port Ukrainian forces also hit a Karakurt guided missile corvette, a patrol boat, and a tanker belonging to Russia’s so-called shadow oil fleet used to evade western sanctions and price caps. “One more Russian carrier of Kalibr missiles is out of action,” said Ukraine’s president. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had struck two more “shadow fleet” tankers near the entrance of the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Two people were killed and three others wounded as Russian drones struck Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian emergency service reported. It said the attack damaged three residential building and drones also hit port infrastructure, causing a fire that was later extinguished by emergency teams. Night-time Russian strikes also wounded six people in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, the agency said. A passenger bus transporting 40 children was damaged, but no one inside was injured, it added.

Overnight into Sunday, Russia attacked Ukraine with 269 drones and ballistic missiles, according to the Ukrainian air force, out of which 249 drones were countered or shot down. Hits from ballistic missiles and 19 drones were recorded in 15 locations, the air force said in a Facebook update.

In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike west of Moscow killed a 77-year-old man, the local governor said, near the town of Volokolamsk, about 120km (75 miles) from central Moscow. Six drones were shot down in the Moscow region surrounding the Russian capital, the governor added. At least five more drones were downed on the approach to Moscow itself, according to the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.

Ukraine said there was also one death in the frontline Kherson region and another in an attack on the industrial city of Dnipro. Russian troops were inching towards the city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s top army official said on Saturday.