Ukraine Reports Deadly Russian Strikes, Says It Hit Shadow Fleet Tankers

Russia’s overnight barrages kept killing civilians across Ukraine even as Kyiv moved to hit the oil system that helps pay for the war. Ukrainian officials said drone and missile strikes by Russia killed 10 people and injured at least 76 over the previous day, with fatalities reported in Kherson, Odesa, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy regions.

Kyiv then said it struck the Primorsk oil terminal in Russia’s Leningrad region and two oil tankers near Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the vessels were part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, aging ships used to evade Western sanctions and oil price caps. He said the infrastructure at Primorsk, near Finland, had been significantly damaged and that three ships there were also affected.

Primorsk matters because it is Russia’s largest oil-exporting port on the Baltic Sea, operated by state oil firm Transneft, and can handle hundreds of thousands of barrels a day. It sits more than 1,000 kilometers from Ukraine and had already been targeted multiple times in March, underlining how far Kyiv is willing to project pressure against the Russian energy network. Local Russian officials said there was no immediate sign of an oil spill and gave no early casualty or damage assessment.

The attacks came amid a fast-escalating drone war. Ukraine said Russia fired nearly 270 drones and one ballistic missile overnight, most of them intercepted. Russia said Ukraine launched at least 334 drones, with the northwestern Leningrad region heavily targeted. In April, Russia fired a record average of more than 200 long-range attack drones a day at Ukraine, a pace that has stretched air defenses and sharpened the contest over endurance as much as territory.

For Ukraine, the oil strikes are aimed at revenue, not just disruption. Ukrainian officials argue that pressure on Russian export infrastructure can squeeze the cash flow that funds Moscow’s full-scale invasion, now in its fifth year. But the pattern also shows how the war is becoming a duel of economic attrition and signaling: Russia continues to strike Ukrainian cities, while Ukraine tries to raise the cost of financing that campaign by targeting the tankers, terminals and ports that keep Russian crude moving.