MOSCOW, April 6 (Reuters) – At least eight people were injured, including two children, during Ukrainian drone attacks on the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, with a number of residential houses sustaining damage, Russian authorities on Monday.
Russia did not say if the port of Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest exporting outlet on the Black Sea, was struck.
Ukraine has significantly intensified attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs both on the Baltic and Black seas, seeking to reduce Moscow’s revenues from the sales of oil, the lifeblood of its economy.
The area of the port of Novorossiysk is also a location for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan and whose shareholders include U.S. majors, such as Chevron and Exon Mobil.
Usually, when the alerts for air raids are issued, the oil terminals suspend operations. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Russia’s military said early on Monday that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period and officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households in outages linked to air attacks.
On Sunday evening, a drone killed a civil defence volunteer in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, a frequent target of the Ukrainian military.
The mayor of the port of Novorossiysk, Andrei Kravchenko, said drone debris had struck a high-rise apartment building.
In Russian-controlled Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the head of the Russia-installed government, Andrei Chertkov, said repair crews had restored power to two major cities, Donetsk and Makiivka, after Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure.
Chertkov had earlier said that nearly half a million households had been left without electricity. Work was continuing in areas still without power.
Crews were also restoring power after mass outages in Russian-held areas of Zaporizhzhia region.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Guy Faulconbridge, William Maclean)
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