Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Friday that it struck a Lukoil-owned refinery in Russia’s city of Perm for the second day in a row, marking the third such strike in the past nine days. It set fire to a key facility for primary oil processing at the refinery, one of the largest in Russia and located about 1,500 km (932 miles) from Ukraine. The SBU said it also again struck an oil pumping station in the area, damaging one of the reservoirs. Zelenskyy hailed a Ukrainian strike on a Russian oil depot in the Yaroslavl region, about 200km (125 miles) north-east of Moscow. At least 13 airports in southern Russia were closed on Friday morning due to the threat of a Ukrainian attack, aviation authorities in Russia said.
Zelenskyy on Friday said he visited the frontline in south-eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s troops had managed to regain control over small chunks of land in recent months. “Despite the announced ceasefire, the enemy has not reduced the intensity of its assaults,” Zelenskyy said. The Russian defence ministry said on Friday its forces had taken control of the village of Kryva Luka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, state news agency RIA reported. Reuters, which carried the story, could not independently confirm the battlefield report.
Ukraine is running short of air defence missiles after Russia’s massive winter attack campaign, the air force said on Friday, as it braces for further strikes. “Today, the launchers assigned to certain units and batteries are half-empty – and that’s putting it mildly. They have a limited number of missiles,” air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat was quoted as saying by the Ukrinform news agency. Ukraine makes its own systems to down long-range Russian drones but for missile interception it remains heavily dependent on foreign kit. The US Patriot is also being used extensively in the US-Israeli war in Iran, putting Ukraine under increased supply pressure. Ihnat said Ukraine has had to ask allies for as few as five to 10 missiles at a time for systems such as Nasams and Iris-T.
Russia has increasingly focused its aerial attacks on small Ukrainian power substations, with increased drone capacity allowing it to disrupt Ukraine’s grid over the past winter more than ever, says the London-based research group Centre for Information Resilience. Ukraine struggles to protect such facilities, concentrating limited air defences instead on major assets including power plants. Ukraine’s energy sector has suffered about $25bn worth of damage as a result of Russia’s bombardment, according to World Bank estimates, with the total cost of the sector’s rebuilding and recovery estimated at more than $90bn.
Russia complained that Israeli authorities had caved in to pressure from Ukraine by turning away a grain shipment from its Haifa port last week. Ukraine says the grain in question was stolen from regions of Ukraine that Russia has illegally occupied. The Russian foreign ministry said: “Moscow regretted this step, clearly taken under pressure from Kyiv.” Ukraine has said the cargo being turned away showed that Kyiv’s legal and diplomatic actions had worked.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 67 drones over Thursday night into Friday – the lowest number in almost a month. Volodymyr Zelenskyy also reported hundreds of Russian attacks on the frontline with short-range drones and attempted assaults. Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed 264 Ukrainian drones overnight and that its troops were “responding symmetrically”.
Zelenskyy said on Friday that he expects US envoys of Donald Trump to visit Ukraine in the coming weeks to restart talks on ending Russia’s invasion. It comes after Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, attended meetings this week in the US that Zelenskyy said touched on further prisoner exchanges and security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday it had registered more than 3,000 attacks on Ukraine’s healthcare system since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. About 80% hit outpatient clinics, hospitals and other care settings, while ambulances and other health-related vehicles accounted for the remaining 20%. “Every one of these attacks is a violation of international humanitarian law,” said the director of WHO Europe, Hans Kluge. “This cannot be normalised.” According to the UN, 12.7 million people in Ukraine are in need of humanitarian aid.
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