At least two people were killed in Kyiv after Russian jet-powered drones struck a petrol station on Friday.
A 12-year-old boy was among 12 people who were injured by the attack, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Ukraine‘s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said one of the injured was a first responder who was “wounded in a double-tap strike.”
Russia increasingly targeting petrol stations with new, faster drones
Friday’s drone strikes come a day after what is thought to be the first Russian attack on a Kyiv gas station during the war.
Russia has struck around 300 petrol stations in Ukraine in recent months, most of which were in or near frontline areas.
The attacks on petrol stations come amid a spike in Russian assaults using new, faster and harder-to-intercept jet-powered drones to strike logistics centers, warehouses and commercial supply chains.
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Ukraine condemns escalating Russian ‘terror’
Zelenskyy said Russia was escalating these strikes on civilian energy infrastructure, calling them “increasingly terrorist in nature.”
“Maximum attention must be focused on protecting the skies, finding solutions to protect people, and scaling up countermeasures against Russian drones,” the Ukrainian leader said in a post on X.
The CEO of Ukrainian oil giant Ukrnafta, which owns the gas station and one other that was also struck on Friday morning, condemned Russia for “yet another deliberate strike on civilian facilities.”
“There is no military objective in such attacks. This is terror against the civilian population,” Bogdan Kukura said.
Russia has not publicly commented on the latest attacks, but has consistently denied targeting civilians.
Ukraine, Russia striking logistics, energy targets
More than four and a half years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion and with the fighting on the front lines in eastern Ukraine mostly stalled, Russia and Ukraine have been increasingly hitting logistics, energy and other economic targets in a bid to dent the other’s war effort.
Ukraine has also stepped up its own drone attacks inside Russia. Overnight, two people were killed in Russia’s Tula region, while one person was killed in Kursk on Friday, officials said.
Tula’s regional governor Dmitry Milyayev added that three people were injured in the attacks.
Ozon, Russia’s second-largest e-commerce platform, said a Ukrainian drone had struck a logistics hub in the city of Saratov, starting a fire.
More than 20 warehouses belonging to Ozon and Wildberries, Russia’s other leading online retailer, have been hit in Ukrainian attacks in recent weeks.
Kyiv says the strikes are justified as part of its campaign to undermine Russia’s war effort, which has also seen Ukraine target Russian oil refineries and other energy infrastructure.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko
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