MOSCOW (Reuters) – Oil tanks at a storage facility in the town of Klintsy in Russia’s Bryansk region caught fire after the military brought down a Ukrainian drone, Alexander Bogomaz, the regional governor, said on Friday.
According to preliminary information, nobody had been hurt in the incident, Bogomaz said, adding that the fire was being put out by firefighting teams.
“An aeroplane-style drone was brought down by the defence ministry using radio-electronic means. When the aerial target was destroyed, its munitions were dropped on the territory of the Klintsy oil depot,” Bogomaz wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Bogomaz said a further two Ukrainian drones had been shot down over other parts of Bryansk by air defence units.
Unverified footage posted on social media showed a fire burning in the darkness at the oil depot along what looked like storage tanks.
The TASS state news agency said the fire covered an area of around 1,000 square metres. A specialised firefighting train had arrived on the scene, the RIA news agency reported, citing information from emergency services.
Earlier on Friday, the Russian Defence Ministry had said it had destroyed a Ukrainian drone in the skies over the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.
Authorities in the region regularly report drone attacks from Ukraine.
A Russian-appointed official said a day earlier that Ukraine had tried and failed to target a Russian Baltic Sea oil terminal with a drone, in what appeared to be a rare attempt to strike a facility in St Petersburg.
A Ukrainian government minister was quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Thursday as saying that Ukraine had hit targets in St Petersburg using a domestically produced drone that flew 1,250 km (775 miles).
Reuters could not independently verify the statements.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Andrew Osborn and Jason Neely)
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