In a sign of increasing homegrown capabilities, Ukraine on Tuesday attacked yet another Russian refinery, plus a suspected drone assembly factory inside Russia.
Ukraine has been developing their own long-range drones, and have been able to attack Russia deep inside their territory. This latest attack happened near the cities of Yelabuga and Nizhnekamsk, located some 1,200 kilometers inside Russian territory.
Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil refineries, and has reportedly struck more than a dozen, taking out over 14% of Russia’s refining capacity in just the past month.
The country has also been targeting drones and ammunition factories deep inside Russia, in a bid to compensate for their battlefield disadvantage.
In this particular strike, it has emerged that citizens of 9 Nations, mostly African, were the factory floor workers reportedly assembling the Iran-designed Shahed suicide drones.
According to media reports, the Ukrainian drones targeted Alabuga Polytechnic, an institution reportedly providing the training and hands-on expertise to mostly foreign students, in the assembly of the drones.
Russian leaders said the attack did not cause significant damage, but Ukraine’s military intelligence said the strike in Yelabuga “caused significant destruction of production facilities”. Videos posted on social media showed massive explosions at the facility.
😎 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s new factory-smashing drone was a $90,000 sport plane with a robot at the controls. Ukrainian engineers fitted autonomous controls to an A-22 sport plane—and loaded it with explosives before it Unloaded on Alabuga.
pic.twitter.com/JILjUax6Er— Claretta Nijhuis (@NijhuisClaretta) April 4, 2024
It is unclear how many Kenyans were injured, and how many were at the facility to begin with. But we are confident of at least one, since the official Alabuga X account released this video featuring Macrene Achieng Otieno, who studies and works at Alabuga.
“Alabuga is a strong place and we will get through this” ✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻 pic.twitter.com/QGO2Nb6xnN
— Alabuga (@sezalabuga) April 3, 2024
