Russian attacks kill three in Ukraine as Kyiv hits another oil refinery

President Zelenskyy says Ukraine is expanding its long-range drone campaign with new strikes deep inside Russia.

Overnight Russian attacks have killed at least three people and injured more than a dozen in southeastern Ukraine as Kyiv has struck a Russian oil refinery more than 1,300km (800 miles) from the front line.

Russia attacked the Dnipropetrovsk region with drones early on Wednesday, damaging five petrol stations and killing a woman, Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said. A separate attack late on Tuesday in Zaporizhzhia, the capital of the neighbouring Zaporizhia region, killed two people, Ukrainian media reported.

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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement that Ukraine targeted an oil refinery in Ufa in southern Russia and what he described as a strategic facility of Russia’s military-industrial complex in the Penza region.

“This is an entirely just response to everything Russia is doing against us. Peace is needed, and this is exactly what Russia’s leadership must realize,” he wrote in a post on X.

A day earlier, Russia said it shot down 419 Ukrainian drones over the country, including in the Moscow region, where authorities said a six-month-old was killed.

Kyiv has stepped up its long-range drone strikes against Russia in recent months as Moscow’s full-scale war against Ukraine has dragged on for almost four and a half years.

Kyiv signed a contract on Tuesday with Sweden for 16 used Gripen E fighter jets, aircraft manufacturer Saab said, valuing the deal at 24.6 billion kronor ($2.53bn). Zelenskyy said the 16 older aircraft would be transferred to Ukraine’s air force at the beginning of 2027, as agreed with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

Earlier in the week, the Kremlin noted that Russia’s position on a peace deal is unchanged from 2024. Putin said in a television interview over the weekend that Russia would press ahead with its aim of fully controlling four Ukrainian regions it unilaterally annexed in 2022 – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – rejecting what he said was a new Ukrainian proposal to scale back the fighting.