A fire broke out at the Rosneft oil base in the Russian city of Belgorod this morning. Early in the morning, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram page that two Ukrainian helicopters had entered Russian territory at low altitude and hit an oil base.
There are no victims, two people were injured, the residents of the houses on the adjacent streets were temporarily evacuated. “Rosneft” company states in its message that there are no victims, without saying anything about the causes of the fire.
In the videos published on social networks, two helicopters are firing rockets at the oil base, and a large fire immediately breaks out.
According to “Interfax”, 8 oil reserves were set on fire, each of which has a capacity of two thousand cubic meters. The firefighters who arrived at the “Reuters” video are trying to put out the fire. The attacks on the oil base were recorded by the security cameras installed at the base.
Belgorod is located about 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, north of the Ukrainian city of Chernigov.
This is the first air strike by Ukraine on Russian territory since the beginning of the war on February 24.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said today that it could not confirm or deny reports of Ukraine’s involvement in the attack on the oil base, as it has no military information.
Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said the incident would not affect supplies or consumer prices. The governor of Kursk Roman Starovoy assured that the fuel reserves were sufficient for at least a few weeks and called on the population not to accumulate fuel reserves.
Hitting the enemy’s fuel depots has been widely used by Russian forces in recent weeks. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov often mentions in daily news programs the shelling of Ukraine’s fuel depots, including in the western regions of Ukraine, far from hostilities.
On April 1, he said that Russian forces had destroyed six Ukrainian military facilities with air weapons, five ammunition depots and one fuel depot. During the past day, he listed several episodes about the actions of the Russian armed forces, but did not say anything about the attack on the Belgorod oil base.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the incident, saying that the incident did not create comfortable conditions for the talks to continue.
He said that President Vladimir Putin was informed that he had been informed about it.
Peskov noted that fuel supply routes are being reorganized. “Everything is being done to reorganize the fuel supply chain so that what happened does not have any impact on the supply of all necessary types of fuel.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who visited India after China, said today that he sees progress in the talks between Russia and Ukraine and that they should continue.
Adviser to the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak said that the talks with the involvement of working groups resumed online today.