Ukraine says it hit oil terminal in Russian-occupied Crimea

Ukraine’s military has said it struck a major oil terminal in occupied Crimea that provides fuel for Russia’s war effort as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war has entered a key phase.

“At night, a successful strike was carried out on the enemy’s offshore oil terminal in temporarily occupied Feodosia, Crimea,” the Ukrainian military said in a post on social media on Monday.

Both Moscow and Kyiv are facing the issue of how to sustain their costly war of attrition – a war that started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – that shows no signs of a resolution.

Ukraine’s General Staff said on social media that the oil terminal in Feodosia, on the south coast of the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula, has been supplying the Russian army with fuel and that the strike was part of an ongoing effort to “undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian Federation.”

Meanwhile, Russian-installed authorities Feodosia reported a fire at the terminal on Monday morning but did not say what might have caused it.

Ukraine has increasingly targeted rear areas that are essential for Russia’s onslaught, now deep into its third year. It has developed long-range drones that have hit oil depots and refineries as well as armouries.

Kyiv’s aim is to impair Russia’s ability to support its front-line units, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, where the main Russian battlefield effort is stretching weary Ukrainian forces.

In a briefing on Monday, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it captured the village of Hrodivka, a settlement in the Donetsk region near Pokrovsk, as Russian troops close in on the key logistics hub.

The settlement with an estimated pre-war population of around 2,000 is the latest in a series of towns in the Donetsk region to have fallen to Russian forces, as they push towards Pokrovsk.

Last week, Ukraine’s army said that it had withdrawn from the mining town of Vuhledar, also in the Donetsk region, handing Russia one of its most significant territorial advances in weeks.

Late on Sunday, Zelenskyy said the war is in “a very important phase” as the Ukrainian army works hard to hold the bigger Russian forces at bay in the east while also holding ground in Russia’s Kursk border region, where Ukraine has captured territory since launching an incursion there two months ago.

Ukraine needs to “put pressure on Russia in the way that’s necessary for Russia to realise that the war will gain them nothing,” Zelenskyy said in a video statement.

“We will continue to apply even greater pressure on Russia – because only through strength can we bring peace closer,” he added.

Meanwhile, a wave of Russian missile strikes on Ukraine continued on Monday.

Ukrainian authorities said three civilians had been killed in overnight Russian attacks – two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region.

The governor of Kherson later said that a Russian strike on the town had wounded 19 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings.

In the Zaporizhia region, which Russia claimed to have annexed alongside three other Ukrainian regions in 2022, three people were wounded after Russian attacks on infrastructure facilities, local authorities said.

Russian forces also launched several missiles and dozens of drones overnight, the air force in Kyiv said, with two missiles shot down over the capital and the third exploding near an airfield in the central Khmelnytskyi region.

Authorities in Kyiv said debris from the downed missiles had landed near a kindergarten.

The acting head of the Communications Department of Ukraine’s Air Force, Yurii Ihnat, said that two of the hypersonic Kinzhal missiles that were shot down over the Kyiv region were aimed at the capital city.

“Despite the fact that it’s getting harder, despite [Russia’s] improvements and the use of new tactics, today we have two shootdowns,” Ihnat told the Associated Press news agency.

“They are learning from their mistakes and from our mistakes. They are improving their technology so that we are able to shoot down fewer of them,” Ihnat said.