Ukraine war briefing: Energy war continues with strikes on Russian oil and gas plants

Ukrainian drones struck the giant Orenburg gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire and forcing it to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan, according to both Russian and Kazakh authorities. The plant is run by Russia’s state-owned Gazprom company and located in a region of the same name near the Kazakh border. It is part of a production and processing complex that is one of the world’s largest of its kind with an annual capacity of 45bn cubic metres. It handles gas condensate from Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field as well as Orenburg’s own oil and gas fields.

The Russian regional governor, Yevgeny Solntsev, said drone strikes set fire to a workshop at the plant and damaged part of it. The Kazakh energy ministry on Sunday said Gazprom had notified it that the plant was temporarily unable to process gas originating in Kazakhstan “due to an emergency situation following a drone attack”. Ukraine’s general staff said a “large-scale fire” erupted at the plant and one of its gas processing and purification units was damaged.

A separate drone strike hit Russia’s Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, in the Samara region near Orenburg, sparking a blaze and damaging its main refining units, Ukraine’s general staff said. It is operated by Rosneft and has an annual capacity of 4.9m tonnes, turning out more than 20 kinds of petroleum products.

Russian forces meanwhile attacked a coalmine in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region and an energy site in the Chernihiv region, their operators said. Energy firm DTEK said 192 coalminers were safely brought to the surface with no injuries; while Chernihivoblenergo, the regional energy company in Chernihiv, said an attack there caused extensive damage and cut off electricity to 55,000 users. Russian attacks in recent weeks have focused on Ukraine’s civilian power grid and energy sites, while Ukraine has attacked Russian oil and gas facilities that either directly power the war or help fund it through exports.

A sanctioned “shadow fleet” tanker was preparing to transfer Russian liquefied natural gas to another ship off the coast of Malaysia, the Bloomberg news agency reported. Satellite tracking showed the “dark ship” Perle lying next to another ship about 90km east of the Malaysian peninsula, Bloomberg said, reporting: “Bloomberg analysis suggests that this could be the first documented occurrence of Russian LNG transferred in waters off Malaysia.” The gas appeared to have been loaded at Russia’s Portovaya plant on the Baltic coast, the agency said.

The European Union wants “flag states” that register ships to pre-authorise the stopping and inspection of Russia’s “shadow fleet” of illicit oil tankers. The EU’s diplomatic arm, the EEAS, said estimates had put the shadow fleet at anywhere between 600 and 1,400 ships, with the EU sanctioning more than 400 as well as entities that enable the fleet to operate. Once the EU adopts its 19th package of sanctions – likely within the next week – that figure will rise to about 560 vessels and bring forward a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports by a year to 1 January 2027.

The number of shadow fleet ships sailing under a false flag has recently increased, according to the EEAS. Beefing up inspections is the latest EU proposal aimed at curbing Russian oil and gas revenue being used by Moscow to finance the Ukraine war. EU foreign ministers are due to meet on Monday to discuss this and other new measures against Russia. The G7 has agreed to work jointly towards curbing the shadow fleet and to target countries that help Moscow circumvent sanctions as well as those that have increased Russian oil imports. The EU said its measures would also target tanker refuelling.

Donald Trump again changed his tune on the war, this time reportedly putting pressure on Volodymy Zelenskyy to surrender territory to Vladimir Putin. The US president said less than a month ago that he thought Ukraine could take back all its territory and even “go further” into Russian lands. Now, after a phone call from Putin, Trump is also backpedalling from talk of supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. The US president has repeatedly appeared to be readily manipulated by Putin. The Financial Times reported that Trump warned Zelenskyy that Putin would “destroy” Ukraine unless a peace deal was made.

“It was pretty bad,” a source said after Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy. “The message was ‘Your country will freeze, and your country will be destroyed’ [if Ukraine doesn’t make a deal with Russia].” A separate source denied that Trump said “destroyed” but both sources said Trump resorted to profanity several times.

Ukrainian strikes killed two people and wounded one in Russia’s Belgorod region “when a drone dropped explosives on an agricultural enterprise”, said the local governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. Moscow has stepped up direct attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, while Ukraine’s military denies deliberately targeting civilians.