KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine’s military struck the Unecha oil pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region, the commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces, Robert Brovdi, said late on Thursday.
Brovdi posted a video on Telegram messenger showing a large fire at a facility with numerous fuel tanks. Reuters could not confirm the location of the infrastructure in the video.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, meanwhile, said on Facebook that crude oil deliveries from Russia to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline had been halted after an attack on the pipeline near the Russia-Belarus border.
“This is another attack against our energy security,” Szijjarto wrote.
Unlike most European Union countries, Slovakia and neighbouring Hungary remain dependent on Russian energy and receive most of their crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline that runs through Belarus and Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia.
Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, targeting a sector that plays a huge part in financing the Kremlin’s war efforts. Oil and gas sales account for a quarter of Russia’s total budget proceeds.
Its almost daily drone attacks on oil refineries and pipelines have led to fuel shortages in a number of Russian regions.
Russia, meanwhile, has intensified its own attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in spite of efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the conflict.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Anita Komuves in Budapest and Vera Dvorakova in Gdansk Editing by Mark Potter and David Goodman)
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