KYIV/BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Ukraine’s military again struck the Unecha oil pumping station, a critical part of Russia’s Europe-bound Druzhba oil pipeline, the commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces said late on Thursday, and Hungary said deliveries had been halted.
Russia and Ukraine have stepped up attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure over the past few weeks with Kyiv damaging several Russian refineries in an effort to reduce revenues financing Russia’s war in Ukraine, disrupt its energy exports and create fuel shortages inside Russia.
For its part, Russia has fired rockets and drones at Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, reducing Kyiv’s ability to import gas and provide heating to its population and fuel for the military.
The Druzhba pipeline ships oil from Russia to Hungary and Slovakia, as well as from Kazakhstan to Germany. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked the pipeline’s facilities this month, causing a few days of supply disruption.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, meanwhile, said crude oil deliveries from Russia to Hungary via the Druzhba link had been halted after an attack on the pipeline located near the Russia-Belarus border.
“This is another attack against our energy security,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces, posted a video on Telegram messenger showing a large fire at a facility with numerous fuel tanks. Reuters could not confirm the location of the infrastructure in the video.
Russian regional governor Alexander Bogomaz, whose Bryansk region borders both Ukraine and Belarus in the far west of Russia, said on Friday that an energy facility at Unecha had caught fire as a result of Ukrainian missile and drone attacks, adding that the blaze has been extinguished.
“As a result of repelling a combined attack carried out by HIMARS MLRS missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, a fire broke out at a fuel infrastructure facility in the Unecha district,” Bogomaz said on Telegram.
Unlike most European Union countries, Slovakia and neighbouring Hungary remain dependent on Russian energy and receive most of their crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline that runs through Belarus and Ukraine.
Almost daily Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries and pipelines have caused fuel shortages in a number of Russian regions.
Russia, meanwhile, has intensified its own attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in spite of efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to negotiate an end to the conflict.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Anita Komuves in Budapest and Vera Dvorakova in Gdansk; editing by Mark Potter, David Goodman and Mark Heinrich)
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