Ukraine strikes Russian refineries as Odesa ports targeted

Bloomberg News on Sep 13, 2026

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Russia hit energy facilities and other sites in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine overnight while Kyiv’s forces claimed strikes on oil refineries in southern Russia and Tatarstan.

Debate continues on when and where new talks may be scheduled on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, well into its fifth year, after U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and Kyiv last weekend for top-level meetings.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Telegram post that its forces struck power substations in Odesa and Mykolaiv that support port infrastructure in the regions. A logistics center in Nova Poshta was also hit in Odesa region. In addition, railway infrastructure in western Ukraine used to transport military cargo from European countries was targeted, Russia said. It also struck a dry cargo ship carrying supplies for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the port of Odesa, the ministry reported late Sunday. Ukraine hasn’t commented.

A multistory apartment building, private homes, two educational institutions and infrastructure facilities were damaged during Russia’s overnight attacks, Serhiy Lysak, head of the Odesa military administration, said in a statement. The consequences of the attack are being assessed.

Russia has turned to “systematic attacks against civilians, trains and the infrastructure that keeps the country moving,” Ukraine Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X.

On Saturday, Ukrainian tennis player Dayana Yastremska posted on Instagram that her family’s apartment in an Odesa high-rise had been destroyed by a Russian Kalibr cruise missile.

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday also reported movement in the ground war, saying its forces were expanding an “outer control zone” in the Kharkiv region in northern Ukraine, Interfax reported.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in an X post that the Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region and the Taneco refinery in Tatarstan were hit overnight, along with a site at Millerovo in the Rostov region used for the storage and launch of drones.

Regional authorities had earlier cited damage to unspecified industrial and civilian facilities in the Nizhnekamsk region of Tatarstan, a major oil-refining and petrochemical hub located about 900 kilometers (560 miles) east of Moscow, Interfax reported.

A blaze was also reported at a facility in Slavyansk-on-Kuban in Russia’s Krasnodar region following a Ukrainian drone attack, Interfax reported, citing regional authorities.

The General Staff also said it has established that a previously reported strike on the Saratov oil refinery in southwestern Russia damaged the primary crude oil distillation unit and a section of the main oil pipeline. Ukraine has struck the Rosneft PJSC facility several times in the past.

Also since Saturday evening, Ukrainian drones have targeted the training and education center of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine more than ten times, Interfax reported citing the plant’s spokesperson.

The claims can’t be independently verified.

Russia said its air defenses intercepted 389 Ukrainian drones across multiple regions. Ukraine shot down 405 out of 453 Russian drones across multiple locations overnight, according to preliminary data from Ukraine’s General Staff.

In an interview with Germany’s DW published on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would travel to Miami for President Donald Trump’s G20 leaders’ summit in mid-December if Vladimir Putin also attended, saying the two leaders should meet and make decisions.

Zelenskyy said in Canada last week that new meetings could be held with U.S. envoys in New York late this month, potentially when world leaders gather for the U.N. General Assembly’s general debate. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, later said that a new round of trilateral talks — involving Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. — may come in October.

A number of issues must be resolved before any trilateral meeting can take place, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, who’s accompanying Putin at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, told Russia’s Izvestia newspaper. The “territorial issue” remains key to progress, he added.

Putin insists Ukraine must surrender the remainder of its eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal to end the war. Ukraine has repeatedly rejected the demand to hand that region, which Russian forces have failed to capture in fighting dating back to 2014.

“I would say the demands remain the same; there has been no tightening. We would simply like them to be met sooner or later — preferably sooner,” Ushakov said in a separate comment to state TV reporter Pavel Zarubin.

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