A Ukrainian drone strike killed one person and wounded nine others in Russia’s southwestern Orel region, Russian officials said on Sunday, while another attack targeted an oil facility deep inside Russia as Kiev stepped up attacks on military and energy infrastructure.Orel Governor Andrei Klitschkov said a Ukrainian drone struck a residential building in the Orel regional capital at night, killing one person and injuring nine others.In another attack, authorities in Russia’s Yaroslavl region, about 700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, reported that a fuel storage facility caught fire after being hit by a drone, the Associated Press reported.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the attack, saying Ukrainian forces “attacked an oil facility in the Yaroslavl region that is important for the aggressor’s reserves.”Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure in recent months, claiming energy revenue helps fund Moscow’s military operations in the country.Meanwhile, Britain announced it had seized a sanctioned oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet”, a network of ships used to transport oil in violation of international sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.British armed forces boarded and seized the oil tanker Smyrtos in the English Channel on Sunday, in what the Ministry of Defense said was “the first such operation led by the UK.”Russia is believed to operate hundreds of ships through a shadow fleet to bypass Western restrictions on its oil exports.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the operation was aimed at increasing pressure on Moscow. “This operation is another blow to Russia and a reminder that those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine cannot hide,” Starmer said.The developments come as Ukraine and its Western allies continue efforts to disrupt Russia’s energy revenues and military supply chains more than four years after the war began.
