Aftermath of a Russian strike on a steel plant in Ukraine
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Friday’s Coverage: Kyiv Strikes Oil Refinery 1,500 Kilometers Inside Russia
UPDATE 1331 GMT:
Six civilians have been murdered and 45 injured by Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day.
In the Donetsk region in the east, two people were killed in the town of Druzhkivka and eight others were wounded across the region.
In the Zaporizhzhia region in the south, two women were killed and seven people injured.
In the Sumy region in the northeast, a drone attack killed a 69-year-old man and guided bombs and drones injured 12 people, including a 1 1/2-month-old infant, a 15-year-old boy, and a 14-year-old girl.
In the Kherson region in the south, one person was murdered and three injured by attacks on 35 settlements.
Casualties were also recorded in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
UPDATE 1143 GMT:
Ukraine’s General Staff has confirmed overnight drone strikes on the Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai in southwest Russia (see 0701 GMT).
A fire was set at the facility, around 500 km (310 miles) from Ukraine-controlled territory.
The refinery produces almost 6.6 million tons of fuel annually. It was struck by Ukraine 16 times up to June of this year.
UPDATE 0701 GMT:
Ukraine’s drones reportedly struck the Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai in southwest Russia overnight.
Monitoring channel ExileNova+ shared photos and footage of the cliamed attack just after midnight. Flames shot into the night sky accompanied by a low hum resembling that of drone engines.
Local officials confirmed a drone attack but did not specify what was struck.
UPDATE 0618 GMT:
Russia is targeting Ukraine’s data centers and telecommunications infrastructure in its latest attacks.
The Russians have fired on the facilities every day since Wednesday. Around 100,000 households and businesses in Kyiv and the surrounding region suffered temporary internet outages after strikes on Wednesday and Thursday. TV channel Novyny.Live and military media outlet Armiia TV have suspended operations.
On Friday, a drone strike hit the offices of Datagroup, one of Ukraine’s largest telecommunications companies, murdering four civilians.
On Thursday, Polish authorities reported a Starlink satellite station serving Ukraine from central Poland had been set afire. Local officials described an “act of sabotage” linked to Moscow.
UPDATE 0616 GMT:
Ukraine’s air defenses downed 134 of 173 drones, more than 50 of them jet-powered, launched by Russia overnight. Strikes were recorded at 19 locations.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine’s largest steel company, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, has halted production after four Russian strikes in the last five weeks.
The attacks killed five workers and caused extensive damage at the plant in Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine.
ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih joined Ukraine’s other top companies, Metinvest and Interpipe, in suspending production.
The metallurgy sector, contributing 7% of Ukraine’s gross domestic product last year, employs tens of thousands of people. Russia has carried out at least nine separate ballistic missile attacks on the plants since last August, costing steelmakers close to $100 million.
In 2022, Russian forces occupied and destroyed the Azovstal and Illich plants in Mariupol in southeast Ukraine, wiping out 40% of the country’s steel production.
Oleksandr Kalenkov, President of Ukraine’s steel association, Ukrmetallurgprom, called for international assistance, “We don’t really have another choice. Otherwise, we will have to stop production until the end of the war, which could last for many years, and I have doubts that we would be able to save our employees in that time.”
Karin Karlsbro, a member of the European Parliament (MEP), is urging the European Union to remove Ukraine from its tariff regime introduced in June.
The steel sector, warning Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi that the situation is a breaking point, is proposing a mechanism similar to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund. That would pool financing from partners to help affected companies procure critical equipment from Europe.
