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Some 35 missiles were said to have struck crucial gas facilities in Kharkiv and Poltava on Friday
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Russia carried out its “biggest attack yet” on Ukrainian gas facilities on Friday, Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company claimed.
Naftogaz said Russian forces had launched the largest strike on its gas production facilities since the start of the invasion in 2022, sustaining “critical” damage.
“Facilities in Kharkiv and Poltava regions were hit with 35 missiles, many of them ballistic, along with 60 drones. Some were successfully intercepted. Unfortunately, not all,” they said in a statement.
Sergii Koretskyi, Chief Executive Officer, said there was “no military purpose or rationale” to the attacks. Emergency teams were working on site.
The Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday that its forces had carried out massive overnight strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial facilities and on gas and energy infrastructure.
The strikes came just two days after Koretskyi announced Naftogaz would import approximately 500 million cubic meters of LNG from the United States via European countries.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin also warned Donald Trump on Thursday that the U.S. risked “a new stage of escalation” if Washington provides Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles.
Russian warships have repeatedly sailed on collision courses, aimed weapons at Danish naval vessels and disrupted navigation systems in Denmark’s straits connecting the Baltic and North Sea, its intelligence service said Friday.
“We have seen several incidents in the Danish straits, where Danish air force helicopters and naval vessels have been targeted by tracking radars and physically pointed at with weapons from Russian warships,” Danish Defence Intelligence Service Director Thomas Ahrenkiel told a press conference.
Denmark’s intelligence service said such incidents risk unintended escalation.
It comes after Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Kyiv was deploying military experts to Denmark to share its experience in combating Russian drones:
A Finnish court dismissed a case on Friday against the crew of the Russian-linked tanker which damaged Baltic Sea cables last year, ruling prosecutors failed to prove intent and that alleged negligence must be pursued by the ship’s flag state or the crew’s home countries.
The December 25 incident was one of a string of cable and gas pipeline outages in the Baltic Sea since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, putting NATO forces in the region on high alert. Russia has denied involvement in cable cutting.
Finnish prosecutors will decide within a week if they will appeal the ruling, state prosecutor Jukka Rappe told Reuters.
The criminal trial against the captain and two officers was among the first judicial attempts to punish suspected perpetrators for damaging critical underwater infrastructure, but was complicated by provisions of international maritime law and the difficulty of proving criminal intent.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK suspended operations at several gas facilities in the eastern Poltava region after Russian attacks, the company said on Friday.
“Overnight, the enemy once again attacked the energy infrastructure of DTEK Oil&Gas with drones and missiles,” it said on X.
“As a result of the attack, operations at a number of gas production facilities in the Poltava region were halted.”
Ukrainian forces carried out a drone strike on the Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in the Russian city of Orsk, near the border with Kazakhstan, overnight, an official from Kyiv’s SBU domestic security service said on Friday.
The distance of the strike, which caused a fire, was around 1,400 km, the official said.
More than 200 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians returned home on Thursday after the latest prisoner swap with Russia.
Both Ukraine and Russia reported that 185 soldiers and 20 civilians were released from Russian captivity yesterday.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the returning troops included some who fought at the battle for Mariupol at the start of the war.
Sergii Koretskyi, Chief Executive Officer of Naftogaz, said that there was “no military purpose or rationale” to the major reported strike on Ukrainian gas facilities.
“This was a deliberate act of terror against civilian facilities that provide gas extraction and processing essential for the normal life of people,” he said on Friday.
“There was no military purpose or rationale. It was yet another display of Russian malice, aimed solely at disrupting the heating season and depriving Ukrainians of the ability to heat their homes this winter.
“As a result of this attack, a significant portion of our facilities has been damaged. Some of the destruction is critical.”
Russia launched 381 drones and 35 missiles at targets overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Friday.
It said that they were targeting energy infrastructure.
Russia was reported to have carried out a major attack on key Ukrainian gas production sites on Friday.
Naftogaz’s CEO said that a strike had hit Ukraine’s main gas production sites in Poltava, Kharkiv region.
The Russian defence ministry said that Russian forces carried out a massive strike on Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises and gas and energy infrastructure facilities, as reported by Interfax.
Russia has lost around 1,113,430 troops since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces assessed in a report published on Friday.
On top of casualties, they claimed, Russia has lost 11,225 tanks, 23,297 armoured fighting vehicles, 33,413 artillery systems and 427 planes, among other equipment.
The Trump administration this week formally notified congress of a $51mn arms sale to Ukraine and its allies, two sources told the Kyiv Post.
An official told the outlet the step ‘signals a sustained US commitment to supplying Kyiv’, despite concern that a government shut down could disrupt the flow of aid to Europe.
One of the reported shipments was said to be a $1mn package for firearms, parts, and components for Ukraine.
The other was described as a wider $50mn package ‘in defense articles, including technical data and defense services’ for Ukraine, the UK and Belgium, the outlet reported.
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