Arab News | Ukrainian strikes hit major Russian industrial city: authorities

MOSCOW: Ukrainian airstrikes hit the central Russian city of Nizhnekamsk on Sunday, local authorities said, with media reporting a fire in one of the country’s biggest petrochemical plants.

“Early this morning, Nizhnekamsk was the target of a massive and prolonged attack by enemy drones. As a result of this attack, facilities in the industrial zone were damaged,” the city’s mayor, Radmir Belyaev, wrote on Telegram.

A residential building was also damaged, he added.

Nizhnekamsk, a city of about 240,000 people, is often dubbed the “petrochemical capital” of Tatarstan. It is home to oil refineries and a major petrochemical plant.

Authorities in the region, quoted by Russian media, said three people were wounded.

Ukrainian and Russian media said the strikes caused a fire at the Nizhnekamskneftekhim (NKNK) petrochemical complex, owned by leading Russian company Sibur.

Videos published on social networks, which AFP has not authenticated, showed flames and thick smoke rising above the industrial site.

An engineer at an electricity substation was killed in separate Ukrainian strikes overnight on Taganrog, an industrial port city in the Rostov-on-Don region, which borders Ukraine, regional governor Yuri Slyusar said.

Taganrog mayor Svetlana Kambulova said a fire at a substation had been put out and a local state of emergency had been declared.

The defense ministry in Moscow said in a statement that it had shot down 533 Ukrainian drones between Saturday night and Sunday morning over a dozen regions of Russia and annexed Crimea.

There was no immediate response from Kyiv, which says it targets Russian industrial facilities in response to deadly Russian strikes on its own territory.