Ukraine launched coordinated drone attacks overnight against Russian energy infrastructure, setting off fires at a port in Taganrog and striking targets across several regions. Two civilians were injured after one drone hit a private home in the southern Russian city, where local officials also reported damage to fuel storage and an administrative building.
Yury Slyusar, the acting governor of Rostov region, said a tanker, a fuel tank and an administrative building caught fire at the port of Taganrog after the attack. He also said two people were hurt when a drone struck a private home. In a separate message early on Saturday, he said air defences destroyed drones in Taganrog and three districts in the Rostov region, while residents in Grekovo-Timofeyevka were evacuated after a gas pipe in a house caught fire. No casualties were reported there, and in Botsmanovo in the Neklinovsky District the windows in two houses were damaged.
The Taganrog strike matters because it adds another hit to a port city that has been targeted multiple times in recent months, and because the wider wave of attacks reached deep into Russia’s energy system. Fires also broke out at an oil facility in Armavir in Krasnodar Krai, giant fuel tanks burned near Yaroslavl and the Volgograd oil refinery was forced to shut down after drone strikes.
The most sensitive claim came from the Russian side over the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where Rosatom said a drone attack caused an explosion that punched a hole in the wall of a turbine hall but did not damage key equipment. Ukraine’s military denied that it struck power unit No. 6, and that denial leaves the central question unanswered: whether the reported blast at the plant went beyond the turbine hall and affected any safety systems. The plant has been under Russian control since early in the invasion and is offline, but it still needs power to cool its six units.
For Kyiv, the overnight strikes fit a campaign that has increasingly targeted the fuel and power network that helps sustain Russia’s war effort. Ukrainian officials have said attacks such as the one on Armavir show they can reach farther into Russian territory, and the latest round suggests that pressure on energy infrastructure is likely to stay high even as both sides trade claims over the nuclear plant.
In late March 2026, Taganrog already paid a heavy price when a drone attack killed one person and wounded eight others. This time, the local governor’s account pointed to a broader pattern: more damage, more regions hit and a city that now seems to be bracing for repeated nights of fire and alarms rather than a one-off strike.
