The Ukrainian military said on Friday that it carried out an attack against a Russian ship carrying Iranian ammunition, marking one of the latest deep strikes far behind the front lines.
Separately, Ukraine said that it struck an oil refinery that supplies fuel to the Russian military.
The two attacks are the latest in a string of long-range strikes deep into Russian territory and come as Ukraine continues to target critical military and energy facilities. Kyiv hopes this campaign will put additional strains on Moscow’s war machine.
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said they struck the vessel Port Olya 4 in Russia’s Astrakhan region, which borders the Caspian Sea, during an operation on Thursday. It said the ship was loaded with parts for one-way attack drones and ammunition from Iran, adding that the results of the attack are still under investigation.
SOF said Russia uses the port as a logistics hub to transport military supplies from Iran. They said in a statement that “hitting this vessel disrupts a critical supply chain.”
Satellite image ©2024 Maxar Technologies.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said SOF was behind another long-range attack on Friday, this time striking an oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region, which borders Kazakhstan.
It said in a statement that the Syzran refinery produces various fuels, including some for aircraft, and supplies the Russian military. It added that the attack caused fires and explosions.
It’s unclear what weapons Ukrainian forces used in the attacks. Business Insider was unable to independently verify all the details of the two deep-strike operations.
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Ukraine previously faced restrictions on using its limited arsenal of Western-provided cruise and ballistic missiles for strikes inside Russia, restrictions that hamstrung the Ukrainian military until they were lifted last year. The main problem now appears to be munition availability.
As a workaround, Kyiv began to invest heavily in locally produced long-range drones and missiles. Over the past year, it has used these weapons to carry out a range of strikes on Russian airfields, ammunition storage facilities, energy sites, and other high-profile targets.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has kept up its long-range attacks. Megan Ewert, a geospatial researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank that closely tracks the grinding conflict, found that Kyiv carried out 40 drone strikes in Russian territory between July 15 and August 10.
Institute for the Study of War graphic by Megan Ewert
Ewert explained to Business Insider that the number of strikes correlates with the number of sites attacked and said the number of days each week with strikes seems to have an upward trend over the timeframe. She attributed this shift to a possible increase in the intensity of drone use, though ISW does not track the exact number of drones that Ukraine launches in each attack.
The number of Ukrainian drones often varies with each attack. On Monday, for instance, a source in Ukraine’s internal security agency, the SBU, said at least four long-range drones struck a facility that makes parts for cruise missiles in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region. Other attacks may use a different number of munitions.
The SBU told Business Insider that facilities within Russia’s military-industrial complex, which contribute to Moscow’s war machine, “are absolutely legitimate military targets.”
“The SBU continues to work on the demilitarization of facilities that produce weapons for the terror of peaceful Ukrainian cities,” the source said in translated remarks.
