Ukrainian drones hit targets in three Russian regions, local officials say

MOSCOW, Jan 1 (Reuters) – Ukrainian drones struck energy and industrial targets across the Russian regions of Krasnodar, Tatarstan and Kaluga overnight, local officials said on Thursday, and the Ukrainian military confirmed it had carried out two of the three attacks.

In the southern region of Krasnodar, debris from a drone hit the Ilskiy oil refinery in Krasnodar, causing no casualties but igniting a fire that was later extinguished, local authorities said.

In the oil-rich Volga River region of Tatarstan, around 1,400 km (870 miles) from Ukraine, Russian media cited the local governor’s press service as saying that an energy storage facility in the city of Almetyevsk had been hit, causing a blaze that was later put out.

A third strike caused a fire at an unnamed industrial facility in the town of Lyudinovo in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, local governor Vyacheslav Shapsha said in a statement.

The Ukrainian military confirmed in a statement that it had struck the facilities in Krasnodar and Tatarstan. Kyiv has been intensifying strikes against Russian energy infrastructure in recent months, aiming to cut off Moscow’s sources of financing for its military campaign in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix LightEditing by Andrew Osborn and Andrew Heavens)