Reported Ukrainian strike on petrochemical plant deep inside Russiapublished at 10:51 BST
Paul Brown and Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify
We’re investigating reports of a Ukrainian drone attack on a petrochemical facility deep inside Russia, after new videos and photos of smoke rising into the sky were shared on Telegram this morning.
We’ve confirmed one video – showing a long plume of smoke – was filmed more than 1,000km (620 miles) away from Ukraine’s border in Salavat, a city in western Russia’s Bashkortostan republic.
The smoke in the footage is rising from the direction of the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat plant, which this morning the head of Bashkortostan said had been attacked.
Radiy Khabirov added a fire at the site, which processes a variety of petrochemical products like refining oil and producing fertilisers, was being extinguished.
Image source, TelegramWe’re also seeing unconfirmed reports of a Ukrainian attack on an oil refinery in the Volgograd region, further west of Salavat.
Volgograd’s regional governor Andrei Bocharov said a “massive drone attack” was “repelled” overnight. We’re looking for new satellite imagery and videos to get a better picture of what happened – currently we’re only seeing grainy videos filmed in the dark that aren’t possible to geolocate.
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