Russia-Ukraine war live: Ukrainian drone attack sparks fire at Rostov oil depot

Drone strikes another Russian oil products reservoir

Emergency workers have recovered another body in the wreckage of the hotel in Kryvyi Rih that was struck by a rocket attack on Tuesday, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Telegram.

In total, four people were killed and five people were injured in the attack.

The Kharkiv oblast in Ukraine will be experiencing power shutdowns today following the shelling of some energy facilities, Kharkiv Energy said on Telegram.

Hourly and emergency shutdown schedules have been applied simultaneously in the Kharkiv oblast that could lead to an increases in the duration of the outages, the utility warned.

Good morning and welcome to our blog covering developments in the Russia-Ukraine war.

A Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil depot in the Kamensky district of Russia’s southern region of Rostov, its governor said on Wednesday, confirming media reports that several tanks were on fire.

“There are no casualties,” the governor, Vasily Golubev, said on the Telegram messaging app. “Firefighters are extinguishing the fire.”

Russian air defence units destroyed four drones over the region overnight, the Russian defence ministry said, without mention of an attack on the depot.

Reuters reports that earlier, the Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, said three tanks were burning at the Kamensky oil depot after two drones fell on the area.

Videos posted on Russian social media showed what looked like large tanks ablaze at night. Reuters was able to identify one of the videos as locaed in Rostov’s Kamensky district. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

The attack comes while tanks were still on fire at another oil depot in Rostov’s Proletarsk district, about 10 days after a Ukrainian attack, Russian Telegram channels said.

In other developments:

• Russia said on Wednesday it wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency to take a “more objective and clearer” stance on nuclear safety, a day after the head of the agency visited Russia’s Kursk nuclear plant close to where Ukraine has mounted an incursion into the country. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said he had inspected damage from a drone strike, which Russia had blamed on Ukraine, but did not say who was responsible.

• Ukraine’s first lady wants her country’s children to view themselves not as a generation enduring a grinding war, but rather as “a generation of winners”.
  On the sidelines of a day spent at a rehabilitation camp for Ukrainian children in the relatively safe western city of Uzhhorod, Olena Zelenska said Tuesday that working with the next generation was both a moral obligation and a “strategic priority” for Ukraine’s future.

• Aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia is expected to be high on the agenda as the UK’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, meets the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for more F-16 fighters jets and more training for pilots to fly them after revealing that the western warplanes shot down Russian missiles during the heavy attacks on Ukraine over the last few days.

• There have been reports that Ukrainian forces have attempted to cross into Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine and partly Ukrainian-occupied Kursk. “According to the Russian defence ministry, the situation on the border remains difficult but under control,” the regional governor said on social media.

• Meanwhile, Ukraine’s army chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, said his forces had made fresh gains in Kursk and controlled 100 towns and villages across 1,294 sq km (almost 500 sq miles). He claimed Russian forces had redeployed about 30,000 troops because of the Kursk incursion, and that Ukraine had taken 594 PoWs there, write Luke Harding and Pjotr Sauer.