Russian media reports fire at oil production facility in Omsk

A fire broke out at an oil production facility in the Siberian city of Omsk on April 25, according to Russian media.

The state-run media outlet TASS, citing Omsk Oblast's Governor Vitaly Khotsenko, said the fire was assessed to be at a medium danger level and that emergency workers were on the scene.

The press service of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement that three 200-liter containers of petroleum products were on fire at an undisclosed location.

There was no comment from either Khotsenko or the ministry on the suspected cause of the fire.

Omsk is located in central Siberia, north of the Kazakh border. The city of more than 1 million people is some 3,000 kilometers (~1,860 miles) east of Ukraine.

While there was no reporting at the time of this publication that connected Ukraine to the fire, the blaze in Omsk follows a series of drone strikes aimed at damaging Russia's oil industry.

Drones of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) attacked two oil depots in Russia's Smolensk Oblast overnight, destroying 26,000 cubic meters of fuel, sources in law enforcement agencies told the Kyiv Independent on April 24.

A large-scale attack against Russian energy infrastructure on April 20 reportedly caused fires at facilities in Bryansk, Kaluga, and Smolensk oblasts.

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The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Hodunova