Ukraine-Russia latest: Kyiv launches mass drone attack as Putin’s forces in intense assault on east frontline

A Ukrainian drone attack owned by a major Russian oil company has been damaged in an overnight attack as Vladimir Putin’s forces are staging relentless assaults to try to advance towards the town of Pokrovsk.

Officials from the Krasnodar region in southern Russia claimed that debris from a drone that had been shot down caused a fire at the  Black Sea Tuapse oil refinery, owned by oil major Rosneft.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed to have destroyed 75 drones launched by Ukraine , including eight near the Tuapse, but footage published by online news outlet Mash appeared to show an intact drone reaching the refinery before exploding into a fireball upon impact.

It comes as Putin’s troops are continuing to push along the eastern front as they try to advance towards the town of Pokrovsk.

“The enemy pays no attention to their fairly high level of losses and continues to push through towards Pokrovsk,” Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement.

Pokrovsk is less than 15 miles from Russian-occupied land, according to open-source intelligence battlefield maps, and lies at an intersection of roads and a railway that makes it an important logistics point for the military in the east.