Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported on May 3 that overnight Russian air defense systems had shot down 334 Ukrainian drones targeting 16 different regions in the country, including Leningrad and the Moscow metropolitan area. Leningrad regional Governor Alexander Drozdenko reported that the Primorsk commercial seaport, a major oil export terminal on the Baltic Sea, which had already been the target of a series of drone strikes in March, had been the main target of more than 60 of those drones on Saturday night.
That overnight attacke came on the heels of more than 600 drones launched from Ukraine at multiple regions of Russia, some far inland, in the 48 hours prior. Drones were reported intercepted as far away as the Chelyabinsk Region in the Urals, nearly 2,000 km from the Ukrainian border; the Primorsk port itself lies over 1,000 km away from the border. For example: the seaport and oil facilities in Tuapse, on the Black Sea, were targeted by mass drone swarms for the fourth time on May 1; some 12% of Russian oil exports ship from this port. The oil refinery and its primary processing unit in the military-industrial city of Perm, located on the western edge of the Ural Mountain chain, were then hit the same night. The Perm refinery is one of Russia’s largest, and the nearby pumping stations that supply the refinery, reportedly also targeted, potentially disrupting the broader Transneft pipeline system that handles over 80% of Russia’s crude transport in the country.
With Ukrainian strikes now repeatedly hitting deep in Russia’s interior and/or aimed at destruction of Russia’s export capabilities, Russian drone strikes on Ukraine have escalated in response, with heavy strikes, for example, launched on the Odessa region, including the Izmail seaport, April 30-May 1.
