Ukraine Drone Strikes Cut Russian Fuel Output 20%
Ukraine's long-range drones have cut Russian fuel output by about a fifth, halting central refineries and hitting Yaroslavl a record 15th time, even as Kyiv absorbed the fallout of Russia's May 23-24 barrage. The SBU detained an 18-year-old accused of coordinating that attack, which killed two, injured 91 and damaged some 300 sites including the Opera and Ballet Theatre. Fighting pressed on -- 65 frontline clashes, 25 on the Pokrovsk axis, and FAB-250 bombs that killed two in Kramatorsk -- as an earlier US-brokered truce gave way to renewed strikes.
Ukraine's long-range drone campaign continued to bite into Russia's war economy. International energy reporting indicates all major refineries in central Russia have halted or cut output, lowering national fuel production by about 20 percent, after the Yaroslavl refinery was struck on Friday for a record 15th time; the campaign's peak remains the overnight May 16-17 raid that sent more than 350 drones over greater Moscow. The reach extended over the weekend: Ukraine hit the Belets oil depot in Unecha, Bryansk, on the night of May 24-25, and its Unmanned Systems Forces destroyed an S-300 launcher, a rare radar and fuel trains across occupied Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, while Hornet drones knocked out dozens of Russian supply trucks on the Taganrog-Dzhankoi highway through occupied Mariupol, Berdiansk and Melitopol.
At home, Kyiv was still reckoning with Russia's missile-and-drone barrage of May 23-24, which damaged around 300 sites including nearly 150 residential buildings and the Kyiv Municipal Opera and Ballet Theatre. The SBU detained an 18-year-old Kyiv resident accused of coordinating the attack -- which killed two people and injured 91 -- caught conducting reconnaissance for Russian intelligence. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that the strike, which included an Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, was meant to mask Russia's Victory Day humiliation and battlefield failures. City residents filed nearly 1,000 housing compensation claims, and at least six news outlets, among them Deutsche Welle, ARD and UNIAN, had premises or journalists' homes damaged.
The front stayed active. Ukraine's General Staff counted 65 combat engagements by 16:00 on May 25, with 25 assaults concentrated on the Pokrovsk axis and Russian shelling of border areas in Sumy and Chernihiv. In Kramatorsk, Russian FAB-250 aerial bombs killed two civilians -- a 64-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman in a 10:22 morning strike -- and injured seven across two attacks.
The fighting has resumed in full after an earlier US-brokered three-day truce around Victory Day, during which Ukraine and Russia completed a 205-for-205 prisoner exchange that President Zelensky called the first phase of a planned 1,000-for-1,000 swap. Both sides have since accused each other of violating the truce, which has given way to the renewed strikes.