by Russian state-owned Transneft, which operates Russian pipelines, said on Wednesday that several explosive charges dropped by drones were found at the Novozybkov station of the Druzhba pipeline in the Bryansk region of neighboring Ukraine.
“Yesterday [terça-feira] and today, on the territory of the Novozybkov pumping station, explosive devices were found in improvised plastic containers with steel balls broken into fragments,” Transneft spokesman Igor Diomin told the official Russian news agency TASS.
The same source emphasized that the containers with the explosive charges would have broken when they fell from the drones.
“Today at noon [9 horas em Lisboa]a drone was seen dropping another explosive device, similar to the previous ones,” added Diomin, who stressed that the pumping station was not damaged.
According to a representative of Transneft, the composition of the explosive devices indicates that the failed attack was aimed at causing casualties among the personnel of the station, which has not pumped oil since the beginning of the year.
Since the beginning of February, Russia has denounced several attacks against the Druzba pipeline, through which it supplies oil to Belarus and Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The European Union (EU) sanctions include an embargo on Russian oil arriving by sea and exemptions for oil arriving by pipeline in landlocked countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The military offensive launched on February 24, 2022 by Russia in Ukraine has so far displaced more than 14.6 million people – 6.5 million internally displaced and more than 8.1 million in European countries – according to the latest elements of the UN. which ranks this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).
At least 18 million Ukrainians are in need of humanitarian aid and 9.3 million are in need of food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion—justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the need to “expand” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security—was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing them on Russia. political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented as confirmed since the beginning of the war 8,231 dead civilians and 13,734 wounded, underlining that these numbers are much lower than the real ones.
