KYIV (Reuters) -Missiles fired by the Ukrainian navy struck an oil terminal at the Russian port of Kavkaz in the Krasnodar region on Friday, the Ukrainian military said.
Kyiv has tried to undermine Russian forces pressing along the front lines on its territory by attacking Russian oil facilities that are crucial to funding the economy and the war.
The attack was part of a bigger operation by the Ukrainian military and SBU security service to disrupt the logistics of Russian forces in annexed Crimea, a security source told Reuters.
The Ukrainian military reported explosions at the oil terminal site as it worked to verify the damage from the attack carried out with Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles. Ukrainian drones also struck another oil depot in the Krasnodar region, the statement said.
"Russia's 'modern' and 'effective' air defence system once again proved powerless against our missiles and unmanned systems and failed to protect important facilities used for logistics and supply of the Russian army," the military said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Russian defence ministry said on Telegram that its air defence destroyed five missiles and 29 drones targeting Krasnodar.
Falling drone debris caused a fire at an oil depot in the Temryuk district, damaging several tanks filled with fuel and injuring two people, according to local Russian officials.
The Ukrainian security source said the operation was carried out over several days.
It also included strikes on power facilities in the Crimean peninsula which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, eight years before it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The source also said that a day before, the Ukrainian drones hit a Russian Nebo-SVU long-range radar detection system, located near Armyansk in Crimea.
"This SBU special operation blinded the Russian air defence on the significant part of the front," the source said.
Unable to rapidly match Russia's vast arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles, Kyiv has focused on developing and producing drones, including long-range, so it can hit back at Russia, which has bombed Ukraine throughout the 27-month-old invasion.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko, Lydia Kelly and Tom Balmforth; editing by Giles Elgood)
