Ukraine kept up its campaign against Russian military infrastructure on Wednesday, launching drone strikes on defence facilities deep inside Russia and destroying a key road bridge linking the occupied cities of Donetsk and Mariupol.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a drone attack early Wednesday targeted an electromechanics institute in the city of Penza that develops and manufactures missile components. Penza lies about 500 kilometres from Ukraine and south-east of Moscow.
Russian regional authorities confirmed the attack but did not comment on possible damage.
Zelensky also reported a strike on the Ufa oil refinery in Russia's Ural region, around 1,300 kilometres from Ukraine. In recent days, Kiev has said it attacked a satellite communications centre in Dubna near Moscow twice and also targeted a missile supplier in the city of Voronezh.
In occupied eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said it had destroyed a bridge on the main highway connecting the major cities of Donetsk and Mariupol. Images posted on social media showed the wreckage in a river valley roughly 20 kilometres north of the port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.
The general staff in Kiev said the bridge over the Malyi Kalchyk river near Hranitne in the Donetsk region had been struck, without disclosing the weapons used. It also reported attacks on a rail bridge in the occupied Luhansk region and another strategically important crossing in Donetsk.
For weeks, Ukrainian forces have systematically targeted bridges and transport links in occupied territories in an effort to disrupt Russian military logistics.
Russian strikes target fuel infrastructure
Russian attacks continued across Ukraine.
In the southern city of Kherson, two people were killed and nine injured when a Russian drone struck a shared taxi, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Kherson lies on the Dnipro river, which forms part of the frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian airstrikes damaged five petrol stations overnight, according to local authorities. Similar attacks on fuel infrastructure had been reported in the northern Sumy region a day earlier.
Ukrainian energy industry publication Naftorynok has recorded more than 140 such Russian attacks on petrol stations since April.
They appear to be a response to the growing fuel crisis in Russia - first in occupied Crimea and then in many other regions. Petrol has become scarce in Russia because of Ukrainian strikes on refineries and supply routes.
