Shelling kills 3 in Ukraine as a drone attack sparks fire at an oil depot in Russia

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Russian shelling of Ukraine killed three people on Saturday, officials said, as the two countries exchanged drone attacks, one of which set ablaze a Russian oil depot.

Two people died in Ukraine’s partly occupied Kherson region and two were wounded in the attack close to the regional capital, said Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin. Another person died Saturday afternoon and 16 were wounded in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, according to Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.

An oil depot in the Tsimlyansky district, deep inside Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, was set ablaze in the early hours of Saturday following a Ukrainian drone attack — the latest long-range strike by Kyiv’s forces on a border region.

Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to slow down the Kremlin’s war machine. Moscow’s army is pressing hard along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where a shortage of troops and ammunition in the third year of war has made defenders vulnerable.

Rostov Gov. Vasily Golubev said the drone attack caused a fire spanning 200 square meters (2,100 square feet), but there were no casualties. Some five hours after he reported the fire on the Telegram messaging app, Golubev said the fire had been extinguished.

In addition to two drones being intercepted over the Rostov region, Russian air defense systems overnight destroyed two drones over the country’s western Kursk and Belgorod regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

Ukraine’s air defenses, meanwhile, intercepted four of the five drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian air force said. The fifth drone left in the direction of Belarus, said air force commander Mykola Oleschuk.

Meanwhile, eight people were wounded in shelling in the town of Shebekino in Russia's Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Saturday.

Vadym Filashkin, the Ukrainian governor of the partly occupied eastern Donetsk region, said that Russian attacks on Friday had killed six people and wounded 22.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine