MOSCOW: An overnight Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil depot in Sochi, the southwestern Russian resort that hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, local authorities said Sunday (Aug 3).
“Sochi suffered a drone attack by the Kyiv regime last night,” the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region, Veniamine Kondratiev, said on Telegram.
Drone wreckage hit an “oil tank, which caused a fire”, he said.
Ukraine has regularly hit Russian oil and gas infrastructure in response to attacks on its own territory since Russia began its offensive in February 2022.
Overnight, 127 firefighters were working to extinguish the blaze, Kondratiev said. Images, broadcast by Russian media but whose authenticity AFP could not verify, showed flames and thick plumes of black smoke rising from the site.
Air traffic was suspended at Sochi airport but resumed shortly afterwards, Russia’s air transport regulator Rosaviatsia said.
Air strikes on Sochi, around 400km from the Ukrainian border, are relatively rare compared to some other Russian cities.
However, Ukrainian drone attacks killed two people there late last month, according to local authorities.
Ukrainian authorities had not commented on the fire.
Kyiv has warned it will intensify its air strikes against Russia in response to an increase in Russian attacks on its territory in recent weeks, which have left dozens of civilians dead.
Last week, US President Donald Trump gave his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, a ten-day ultimatum, until next Friday, to end the conflict in Ukraine.
The airstrikes and fighting have not abated, however, and the Kremlin has rejected the idea of a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine, which it sees as a gift to Kyiv’s troops.
