Ukraine strikes Russian natural gas plant, key satellite centers

Ukrainian forces struck a major natural gas processing plant and two key satellite communications centers in their latest nighttime attacks on Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said Wednesday.

- By Illia Novikov

The operation was part of Ukraine’s aerial campaign targeting energy facilities and military industries that has intensified as Kyiv builds bigger and better long-range weapons to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion, now in its fifth year.

In response, Moscow has ordered the redeployment of some air defense systems from Russian regions to the capital and to Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, a crucial link for supplying Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. The bridge connects the Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland.

“It is important that as many Russians as possible come to understand that it is the Russian leadership's rejection of diplomacy that is prolonging the war,” Zelensky said on X.

Zelensky has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by President Trump, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused.

The overnight attack hit the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant, which is part of a complex that also houses the only helium plant in Russia, the General Staff said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The attack set the complex on fire, it said.

Orenburg, in the southern Urals near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, is more than 750 miles behind the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.