Russia’s defence ministry said has stated that Ukraine carried out six attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the past day, in violation of a U.S.-brokered moratorium on hitting energy infrastructure targets.
Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause strikes on each other’s energy facilities last month, but both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
In statements published on the Telegram messenger app, the ministry said that Kyiv had damaged energy infrastructure in Russia’s Rostov and Kursk regions, as well as in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
It also said that Ukraine had mounted two failed strikes in Russia’s Krasnodar region, including on a compressor station serving the TurkStream pipeline, which sends gas from Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea.
Ukraine launched a major overnight drone attack on Russia, disrupting flights early on Wednesday in the southern part of the country and forcing the evacuation of residents from dozens of apartments in the Rostov region, Russian officials said.
The Russian defence ministry said that its air defence units destroyed 158 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 29 over the southern Rostov region.
There were no immediate reports of injuries, but residents from 48 apartments in a building in the Rostov town of Aksay were evacuated due to the threat from a possible detonation of a fallen drone, the region’s acting governor said.
The defence ministry said that 69 of the drones were destroyed over the Krasnodar region in Russia’s North Caucasus and 15 over North Ossetia–Alania in the same region of southern Russia.
The ministry only reports the number of drones destroyed, not how many were launched.
The civil aviation watchdog of Russia, Rosaviatsia said that several airports in Russia’s south were closed early on Wednesday to ensure air safety.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine about the attacks. Both sides say their strikes are aimed at destroying infrastructure that is key to overall war efforts.
Kyiv also says that its attacks are in response to Moscow’s continued bombing of Ukraine since the beginning of the war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion of the country more than three years ago.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who took office in January after pledging he would end the war in 24 hours, has sought to broker an end to the conflict. The U.S. in late March said it had agreed with Russia and Ukraine two ceasefire accords, including one that would ban strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
