A new drone bomber may have joined Ukraine’s escalating assault on Russia’s oil industry. On Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, drones operated by the Ukrainian 14th Separate Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Regiment struck a pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline along the Russian-Belarusian border in Bryansk Oblast.

Russia’s air defences reportedly destroyed drones over nine regions, including 11 over Smolensk, which sits on the border with Belarus. Nearly half were hit over Kursk, where Ukrainian troops have occupied several villages for months following an incursion.

Russians are filling their drones with shrapnel to inflict as much damage as possible on civilians in Ukraine, warns Ukrainian defence expert Anatoliy Khrapchynski in a conversation with the Unian agency.

Officials say a Russian drone has blasted a hole in an apartment building in northeastern Ukraine during a nighttime attack that killed at least six people and wounded nine others

The reported strike comes two nights after Ukrainian forces launched a joint attack against the refinery that allegedly damaged multiple on-site facilities.

As snow fell in a wooded area of Ukraine, the long-range attack drones accelerated one by one down an unlit, abandoned road and their whirring engines propelled them into the night sky.

Russia launched a hundred Shahed and imitation drones at Ukraine. The Air Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed 65 of them. The drones were launched from the Russian cities of Orel,