One of the largest oil refineries in the southwestern Russian region of Volgograd caught fire after a drone attack early on February 3 in an apparent continuation of Ukraine's recent targeting of Russian infrastructure to blunt Moscow's ongoing 23-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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Separately, Russia-installed authorities claimed that a Ukrainian drone attack on a bakery in the occupied eastern city of Lysychansk killed at least 20 people and trapped "dozens" of others in the rubble.
“Several dozen more civilians may remain under the rubble,” occupation official Leonid Pasechnik said on Telegram.
Kyiv did not immediately comment on the remarks. Battlefield reports often cannot be verified due to the intense violence in the war zones.
The Volgograd blaze was said to have been extinguished within about three hours.
The Volgograd Ministry of Emergency Situations said an area of around 300 square meters had burned.
Regional Governor Andrei Bocharov said debris from a downed drone had ignited the fire.
“The fire has been localized, the open burning has been eliminated. There are no casualties,” Bocharov said.
LUKoil's Volgograd oil refinery is one of the largest in Russia. It produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, and fuel for ships.
In Ukraine, the military said it had downed nine of 14 Russian drones overnight in an attack on energy infrastructure in Kryviy Rih, a steel-producing city in southeastern Ukraine dozens of kilometers from the front lines.
It was the second attack in as many days on the city, which is President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's hometown.
Kryviy Rih's mayor, Oleksandr Vilkul, said electricity had been cut off to thousands of people, and some areas lost water and heating.
On the diplomatic front, Polish President Andrzej Duda sought to reiterate his support for Ukraine after coming under criticism for saying he was unsure whether Kyiv would be able to retake Russian-occupied Crimea, held by the Kremlin since 2014.
"I don't know if [Ukraine] will regain Crimea, but I believe it will regain [the occupied eastern regions of] Donetsk and Luhansk," Duda had said in a February 2 interview, angering Ukrainian leaders and opposition figures within Poland.
On February 3, Duda looked to ease the anger over his statements, saying on social media: “My actions and position on Russia's brutal aggression against Ukraine have been unequivocal from day one: Russia is violating international law. It is an aggressor and an occupier.”
“Russia's invasion of Ukraine and occupation of the internationally recognized territories of Ukraine, including Crimea, is a crime,” he added.
Poland has been a strong ally of Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of February 2022.