Ukraine’s drones struck a historic museum in Sevastopol, in Russian-annexed Crimea, local authorities said on Wednesday, as officials reduced the number of overnight train services in response to intensifying air attacks.
The museum commemorates the 1853–1856 Crimean War between the Russian Empire and a coalition that included the Ottoman Empire. Russia was defeated in that conflict.
Sevastopol’s Russian-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram that the museum’s roof had been hit. He did not provide details of the damage or indicate whether there were any casualties.
“The enemy will pay for this sacrilege!” Razvozhayev said in a post early on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in Crimea, authorities reduced overnight train services, the peninsula’s Russian-installed governor, Sergei Aksyonov, said on Telegram, following a drone attack earlier this week that injured a train driver and killed his assistant.
The Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, is facing a fuel shortage following recent Ukrainian drone attacks, just as the holiday season begins.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week proposed face-to-face talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a proposal that was rejected.
Following the train incident, the Kremlin said Ukraine was undermining efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Meanwhile, the city of Novokuibyshevsk in Russia’s Samara region, a major oil hub on the Volga River that hosts several refineries operated by the state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, was repelling drone attacks, according to the regional governor.
Authorities urged residents of the city, which has a population of around one million people, to seek shelter as public transport services were suspended amid air raid alerts, local media reported.
Ongoing Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure have forced Moscow to reduce its oil output, making an impact on the world’s third-largest oil producer.
In Russia’s southern Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, falling debris from a drone triggered a fire in a fuel tank at a civilian site, the regional governor wrote on Telegram.
The mayor of Moscow also said on Telegram that the city was repelling drone attacks.
In a rare move, the remote Russian oil-producing regions of Khanty-Mansiysk, Perm and Tyumen, as well as the industrial regions of Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains, thousands of kilometres from Ukraine, issued air raid alerts, according to social media posts from local authorities.
Additional reporting by Reuters.