A pair of Russian journalists have been detained on “extremism” charges and face accusations of working for a group founded by the late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin are accused of producing content for Navalny’s prominent YouTube channel, “NavalnyLIVE,” which publishes videos investigating corruption in the Kremlin that have amassed millions of views.

Russian authorities have designated Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in February, and his organizations as “extremist.” Members of his team have previously been imprisoned and many live in exile.

Gabov was allegedly involved in the “preparation of photo and video materials” for the YouTube channel, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court press service said. He was arrested Saturday and will remain in detention until June 27.

Karelin was arrested in Russia’s northwest Murmansk region on Saturday and is accused of “participation in an extremist organization.” He previously worked for a number of outlets including the Associated Press (AP) and German publication Deutsche Welle (DW), until DW was banned in Russia in 2022.

An AP photo showed Karelin, who has dual Russian-Israeli citizenship, sitting in a glass cage in a Murmansk court on Saturday.

The pair’s detention comes amid a heightened crackdown in Russia on journalists and Kremlin critics, as President Vladimir Putin has sought to stifle dissent more fiercely than before the invasion of Ukraine.

Forbes journalist Sergey Mingazov was also placed under house arrest Saturday after he was detained for allegedly spreading fake news about the Russian army, state media RIA Novosti reported.

Navalny was Putin’s most formidable political opponent before his death in a penal colony, where he was serving a more-than-30-year sentence on extremism charges. Navalny’s family and supporters have accused Putin of being responsible for his death, a claim rejected by the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin’s forces have made further gains in at least three locations along the eastern front in Ukraine – including for the first time in several months an advance in the northern Kharkiv region – highlighting again Kyiv’s need for ammunition and weapons from the United States and other allies.

The latest developments reflect the new tempo on the battlefield since the fall of the industrial town of Avdiivka in February.

Russia’s tactical advances are now daily. They are generally modest -– from a few hundred meters of territory to perhaps a kilometer at most – but they are usually taking place in several locations at once.

From the Ukrainian perspective, the losses are also being accompanied by more public expressions of criticism of the armed forces over the military’s official battlefield updates.

Among the areas continuing to witness some of the greatest Russian pressure are a handful of small settlements to the northeast, and to the south, of Ocheretyne, a large village on a ridge about 16 kms (10 miles) west of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s DeepState monitoring group, which updates daily changes in frontline positions, shows Russian forces pushing forward in eight different locations along 20-25 kms of frontline in one 24-hour period.

Military bloggers on both sides broadly agree that Russian forces have crossed a water course and taken control of the settlements of Semenivka and Berdychi. A few kilometers to the north, Soloviove is now also reported to be in Russian hands, and the tiny settlement of Keramik at least partially so as well.

“The withdrawal in the Donetsk operational zone continues,” the Ukrainian military blogger Myroshnykov writes, expressing concerns that Russian troops could soon move south towards Karlivka – where they could cross the Vovcha River – joining up with other Russian units pushing westwards from recently-captured Pervomaiske.

Criticism of military communications

Myroshnykov and the DeepState site both take aim at official Ukrainian communications, accusing the armed forces of unrealistic updates from the battlefield.

DeepState, in a post on Telegram, published a graphic video of a Russian soldier being killed in a drone strike in the village of Soloviove – but used the clip to argue that isolated incidents can mask the bigger picture, which it accused the military of doing as well.

“You can watch with pleasure forever the video of a Russian (soldier) being torn to pieces,” DeepState wrote, “but nearby there is another location that requires attention: Muscovites calmly moving around the village, keeping it under control. The (Ukrainian) Defense Forces inflict fire damage on them, and one can repeat at least a billion times (on national television) that two-thirds of the village is under the control of the Ukrainian military, but the picture of reality is completely different.”

That assessment – that two-thirds of Soloviove village was under Ukrainian control – was made by Nazar Voloshyn, spokesperson of the Khortytsia operational-strategic group, on Ukrainian TV on Saturday. Nearby Ocheretyne was also still two-thirds controlled by Ukraine, which had things in hand, he said.

“The part of the settlement into which the enemy broke through, is under our fire control. The enemy is blocked and measures are being taken to knock (Russian troops) out. Heavy fighting continues there, but the situation is under the control of the (Ukrainian) Armed Forces,” he said.

For its part, DeepState sees it differently, assessing that Russian troops have been in control of the center of Ocheretyne village, including the railway station, for at least three days. Last week, the monitoring site made a similar complaint against the military accusing “some spokespersons” of incompetence.

As part of his interview on Ukrainian television, Voloshyn also addressed the situation further north, along that part of the frontline that cuts into Kharkiv region, describing Russian forces there as having become “significantly more active” over the past day.

Russia last made small gains in the region in late January and early February, but DeepState assesses a new advance of between one and two kilometers into the village of Kyslivka. Overall, the frontlines in this region have been relatively stable since Ukraine recaptured a large swath of territory in Kharkiv region in late summer of 2022.

Russian forces are also making headway west of Donetsk city, entering the industrial town of Krasnohorivka from the south and the east.

Fierce fighting has been reported around a large brick factory. One Russian military blogger wrote of the battle’s importance: “The liberation (sic) of the refractory plant would actually mean the fall of the Krasnohorivka fortification, as the northern outskirts of the settlement are private buildings, which will be too difficult to defend if the plant is lost.”

More short-term setbacks

Many Western analysts, along with Ukrainian officials, see Russia’s current stepped-up tempo as a precursor to a major offensive attempt later this spring. It is also assumed Moscow wants to take advantage of its significant advantage in ammunition before US supplies – greenlit last week after six months of political stasis – get to the frontlines.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that there will be more short-term setbacks for Ukraine, though without major strategic defeats.

“Russian forces will likely make significant tactical gains in the coming weeks as Ukraine waits for US security assistance to arrive at the front but remain unlikely to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses,” it writes.

Ukraine’s other major quantitative weakness, which also helps explain recent battlefield trajectories, is manpower. A new mobilization law comes into effect next month, which is expected to improve conscription processes. But Kyiv has proved highly reluctant to say clearly how many more soldiers it needs, while Moscow keeps increasing numbers.

“The quality (of Russian fighters) of course varies, but the quantitative advantage is a serious problem, Rob Lee of Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes on X.

“Without (its) manpower advantage, Russia’s artillery and airpower advantage would not be sufficient for Russia to make gains on the battlefield. The relative manpower situation is likely the most important factor that will determine the war’s trajectory, particularly if Russia can sustain recruiting 20-30k a month,” Lee adds.

At least five people were killed and 33 injured in a tornado Saturday that struck Guangzhou, a city of 19 million people in southern China, according to Chinese state media.

Authorities say 141 factory buildings were damaged but no residential houses collapsed, according to the Xinhua news agency. It said a preliminary assessment put the tornado at level-three intensity, two below the highest level of five.

Guangzhou, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Hong Kong, is the capital city of Guangdong province.

A weather station in Liangtian Village, Baiyun District, about 1.7 miles from where the tornado hit, registered a maximum wind gust of 20.6 meters per second, Xinhua reported.

As of 10 p.m. local time, search and rescue operations had ended.

The tornado follows multiple days of heavy rains that have lashed southern China, unleashing deadly floods and threatening to upend the lives of tens of millions of people as rescuers rush to evacuate residents trapped by rising waters.

Guangdong province, an economic powerhouse home to 127 million people, has seen widespread flooding that has forced more than 110,000 people to be relocated, state media reported, citing the local government.

Earlier this week state media reported that floods had killed at least four people in Guangdong.

Since April 16, sustained torrential rains have pounded the Pearl River Delta, China’s manufacturing heartland and one of the country’s most populated regions, with four weather stations in Guangdong registering record rainfall for April.

The Pearl River basin is subject to annual flooding from April to September, but the region has faced more intense rainstorms and severe floods in recent years as scientists warn that the climate crisis will amplify extreme weather, making it deadlier and more frequent.

While tornadoes do not occur as frequently in China as they do in the US, they do happen. A peer-reviewed scientific article from 2015 found that China averages fewer than 100 tornadoes per year, and that at least 1,772 people had died from tornadoes in the country in the 50 years since 1961.

The China Meteorological Agency is warning heavy rain and strong storms are likely to continue until the end of the month.

A Russian court has placed Forbes journalist Sergey Mingazov under house arrest after he was detained for allegedly spreading fake news about the Russian armed forces, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has reported.

Forbes Russia says its journalist will be under house arrest for at least two months as he awaits trial after being detained on Friday.

RIA reported on Saturday that: “Forbes journalist Mingazov, detained in the case of spreading fake (news) about the Russian Armed Forces, has been placed under house arrest.”

On Friday, Mingazov’s lawyer Konstantin Bubon said that the journalist had been detained for “reposting a publication about the events in Bucha (Ukraine)” on Telegram.

Mingazov’s Telegram channel had 476 subscribers at the time of publishing this article. It shows that he reposted stories about the Russian military allegedly committing atrocities in Bucha, near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, from other news outlets such as the BBC’s Russian outlet and Radio Freedom.

Bubon said that Mingazov is accused of spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces “under the guise” of reliable reporting.

The city of Bucha was liberated by Ukrainian forces at the end of March 2022, having been occupied near the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February the same year. According to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, the Russian army committed thousands of war crimes in the Bucha district, with hundreds of civilians killed in the town. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the mass killings and has reiterated baseless claims that the images of civilian bodies were fake.

Internet ban imposed

Bubon told Forbes Russia that Mingazov’s house arrest was enforced as a “preventative measure.” In Russia, preventative measures take place pre-trial and include being remanded in custody, released on bail, or placed under house arrest.

Bubon also told Forbes Russia that the court had banned Mingazov from using the internet and imposed restrictions on his communications with people other than relatives, investigators, lawyers, and medical professionals.

On Saturday, without naming Mingazov, Khabarovsk territory’s Investigative Committee stated that it had chosen house arrest “as a preventative measure,” after charging a man with the public dissemination of knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces.

“In April 2022, a man, acting out of political hatred, posted a publication on a news channel he administers, intended for viewing by an unlimited number of people,” the Investigative Committee alleged.

“It contained, under the guise of being reliable, deliberately false information about… the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” it continued.

Russia has been cracking down on journalists since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Several prominent journalists have been arrested, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor Alsu Kurmasheva and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

Courts have also ordered the arrests in absentia of several journalists for criticizing the state, including Alexander Nevzorov, Dmitry Gordon, and Marina Ovsyannikova.

On Saturday, a local Russian court press service said that Konstantin Gabov, a Russian journalist it said worked as a producer for the Reuters news agency, was detained and accused of “extremism.”

Gabov allegedly helped to produce content for a YouTube channel associated with late opposition leader Alexey Navalny called “NavalnyLIVE,” the Basmanny District Court press service said.

The court said Gabov was involved in the “preparation of photo and video materials” for the YouTube channel and would remain in detention for at least two months, until June 27.

Russian authorities designated Navalny and his organizations as “extremist,” meaning anyone associating with his group faces a legal risk.

Iraq has passed a new law that penalizes same-sex relations with up to 15 years in prison, a move condemned by rights advocates as the latest attack on the country’s LGBTQ community.

The Iraqi parliament on Saturday passed a bill amending a 1988 anti-prostitution law to cover acts including “promoting homosexuality” – now punishable with up to seven years in prison – and “biological sex changes based on personal desires and inclination.”

Transgender individuals and doctors who perform gender reassignment surgery face up to three years in prison under the new law, though it excludes cases of medical intervention to “treat birth defects to affirm the sex of the individual” following a court order.

The punishments are less severe than those originally sought by Raad al-Maliki, the independent Iraqi lawmaker who introduced the bill in August 2023. He had sought to impose penalties of life imprisonment and death for same-sex relations.

However, the vast majority of the 170 lawmakers who attended the parliamentary session Saturday – out of a total of 329 – were in favor of adopting the bill with the reduced sentences.

Mohsen Al-Mandalawi, the acting parliamentary speaker, said the new legislation was aimed at “protecting the moral fabric” of society.

“There is no place for homosexuality in Iraq, the land of prophets, pure imams, and righteous saints,” Al-Mandalawi said in a statement on Saturday.

‘I’d rather die’ than stay in Iraq

Samar, a member of Baghdad’s LGBTQ community, said the legislation was “unfair” and part of a wider “trend” toward homophobia in the country.

Many in the LGBTQ community, including herself, are now desperate to leave the country, she added.

“I have my own business, which I started a long time ago, gathering money so I can leave Iraq, whether legally or illegally. From the amount of pressure I face, I’ve reached a stage of despair. Let it be illegal migration; I’d rather die on the way than stay in Iraq,” Samar said.

Samar also claimed the vote on the bill had been delayed so that it came after the recent meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and US President Joe Biden.

Samar called on the US and other countries to put diplomatic pressure on the Iraqi government to revoke the law.

“I want to voice a demand from the queers in Iraq, not only to the American embassy in Iraq but to all embassies of countries that put human rights as a priority, that they intervene against this law and use diplomatic pressure to end the crimes that are going to happen because of it.”

Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the US Department of State, expressed deep concern over the new legislation, saying it could severely restrict free speech and expression, hinder NGO activities, and diminish Iraq’s appeal to foreign investors by undermining human rights and economic diversity.

He warned that international business coalitions have already signaled that such discriminatory practices could negatively impact Iraq’s economic growth.

“Respect for human rights and political and economic inclusion is essential for Iraq’s security, stability, and prosperity. This legislation is inconsistent with these values and undermines the government’s political and economic reform efforts,” Miller said on Saturday.

Sarah Sanbar, Human Rights Watch’s Iraq researcher, described the new law as “a horrific development and an attack on human rights.”

“Rather than focusing on enacting laws that would benefit Iraqis – like passing the draft domestic violence law or draft child protection law – Iraq is choosing to codify discrimination against LGBT people,” she tweeted.

Seth Mazibuko strides into the intersection of Moema and Vilakazi Street in Soweto, gesturing to the spot that changed South African history.

“This is where the students who were marching peacefully had a first confrontation with the police,” he says.

It was June 16, 1976. Mazibuko had turned 16 the day before. Tens of thousands of students, mostly still just children, streamed through the township to protest the racist education system of apartheid.

For decades, apartheid forced many indignities on the non-white population of the country. Perhaps most tragically, it relegated Black South Africans to a sub-par education and reinforced their place in a segregated society.

But few could have predicted the state violence that followed.

The final straw for Mazibuko and other student leaders was the switch to instruction in Afrikaans – a language few of them understood, and the language of the oppressors.

“When we were raising the hands and fingers of peace, we were met with bullets. I still feel guilty today that I led students and children out of the classroom to be killed,” he says.

Hundreds of students were killed, scores of student leaders, like Mazibuko, were sent to prison, and many more went into exile.

The Soweto uprisings, as they have become known, changed the trajectory of the anti-apartheid movement, and set South Africa on the eventual path of liberation.

But as South Africans celebrate 30 years of democracy this week, many educators and activists believe that there is a crisis hollowing out the country’s education system – a crisis that threatens democracy’s hard-fought gains.

“They sold out. Many of the leaders that were supposed to be leading have left this community. They left the people they were fighting for,” says Mazibuko.

Dropping standards

Just up the road from the iconic intersection, Prince Mulwela teaches a geography lesson to senior students at Morris Isaacson High School. It is a misty fall day; most of the lights in the classroom aren’t working.

The school is famous for its instrumental role in the Soweto uprisings, but Mulwela is focused on today’s problems. During his 18 years at the school, he says it has gotten more and more difficult to educate its students.

“It is becoming harder now because the learners we are teaching are so very problematic,” he says, adding that over the past decade children arriving at high school have been increasingly unprepared.

The statistics do make sobering reading.

Despite substantial education funding, South African students consistently rank among the lowest in global assessments of literacy and numeracy skills.

Out of the 50 countries of a well-respected assessment of fourth graders, South African students ranked last – more than 80% of 9- to-10-year-olds in the country cannot read for meaning.

However, in at least one study, South African sixth-graders do far worse in math than students in Kenya, a much poorer country.

Motshekga says more focus needs to be put on early childhood education and instruction in each learner’s mother tongue, part of a controversial education bill that the government hopes to bring into law. South Africa has eleven official languages.

“I’m very encouraged. I think from where we started off, I don’t think we could have done better,” says Motshekga, who grew up in Soweto.

A challenging history

To illustrate the country’s challenges, Motshekga refers to her own experience. She says she was the only person from her street to attain a proper education in the 1970s. 

Her mother and grandmother were teachers and were able to work around the apartheid system and get her into a Catholic school to finish high school. But the vast majority did not. “That’s why most of my generation are illiterate, unemployed, and poor,” she says.

When Nelson Mandela became president 30 years ago, his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party faced enormous challenges to fix education.

The apartheid education system was a convoluted and racist bureaucracy that had to be undone. There were not enough trained teachers and certainly not enough classrooms.

Now, more than 98% of children aged seven to 14 are in school, according to government statistics. The president recently praised students for their high passing rate in their final school leaving exams known as Matric.

But education experts say that ignores falling standards and high dropout rates.

“In fact, they lie about it when every year we have the festival around the Matric results and they tell us how well they’ve done when it’s not really true,” says Ann Bernstein, the executive director of the Centre of Development and Enterprise, an independent think tank.

Motshekga denied that standards were dropping and said the results show progress.

Bernstein says that South Africa has made meaningful progress in education, but that those gains have slipped in recent years due to corruption, politics, and a lack of political will.

A powerful teachers’ union has also been accused of fostering a “jobs for cash” scheme for teacher placement. Opposition parties and groups like Corruption Watch say that not enough has been done to clean up the education system.

Responding to the most recent accusation relating to jobs, the South African Democratic Teachers Union said last month it “will never condone or tolerate criminal acts in education. The selling of posts is corruption.”

“I think it’s time for the minister to go,” says Bernstein.

For educators like Mulwela, at Morris Isaacson, the problem is obvious. He says education, like many other facets of the state, has been overtaken by a culture of patronage.

“People that are loyal to the ANC, cadres that are loyal to the ANC, are getting jobs in education,” he says. “The government should be saying, ‘let us get people who are qualified for these positions.’”

Earlier this year, the ANC Secretary General admitted that cadre development could be subject to abuse, but said it was key for transformation.

An uncertain future

Many of Mulwela’s students are proud of their school and aware of its role in the protests of 1976.

“They put their lives in danger for a better future, for a better education,” says Mbali Msimanga, a student in her final year.

But she says her generation still faces an uncertain future.

South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world and many university graduates struggle to enter the workforce.

“It is scary for us to be sitting at home and doing nothing,” says Msimanga.

“Especially when you went to university for so long and you have a degree, but you are still struggling to get a job,” her classmate, Atlegang Alcock, agrees.

The personal sacrifices of the generations before them were immense.

Mazibuko spent 11 months in solitary confinement at the Fort Prison in Johannesburg, followed by seven years in Robben Island prison off Cape Town – where Mandela, too, served a lengthy term – for calling for a fair education system. He believes that the next generation is not yet “enjoying the fruit of the tree.”

“When we were marching and doing those things, we said that the tree of liberation shall be watered by the blood of the martyrs,” he says. “These kids are not even enjoying the shade of the tree. And for that, I think our country and our leaders are still going to pay dearly.”

In South Africa’s upcoming election, after 30 years of ANC government, that sentiment could be put to the test.

The raid was carried out by authorities from the Special Public Prosecutor Against Impunity and the Civil Police, government lawyers said, after an investigation was opened into the treatment of migrant children in Texas shelters.

“The Public Prosecutor received a complaint referencing and highlighting incidents regarding Guatemalan children and teenagers being subject to vulnerabilities in shelters in Texas, connected with a network which [involves] NGOs that operate in the United States and Guatemala,” a spokesperson for the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Juan Luis Pantaleon, said.

Pantaleon said the raid was to gather information for the investigation. It included document searches and seizures, the prosecutor’s office said on X.

The complaint was filed in Guatemala but authorities requested the help of the Texas Attorney General’s Office since some of the shelters allegedly involved are located there.

Save the Children, a British organization that helps minors in disasters and humanitarian crises, said in a statement that it was “not given any specific accusation and there is no evidence that support any accusation of improper conduct.”

It added that the organization does “not facilitate – and we never have – any transfer of children or teenagers out of Guatemala.”

Save the Children also said that it answers to the UK’s Charity Commission, which has its books audited annually.

The Guatemalan Prosecutor for Impunity, Rafael Curruchiche, said the case is “transnational and of great transcendence,” involving several organizations.

Curruchiche himself was sanctioned by the European Council last February with asset freezes and listed among those “responsible for undermining democracy, the rule of law, and the peaceful transfer of power in Guatemala.”

He is among other Central American officials who have been sanctioned with visa denial or cancellation for allegedly undermining democracy and the rule of law, including obstructing corruption investigations and raising “spurious” claims against other officials, according to a 2022 Report to Congress by the US Department of State.

Guatemala’s current President Bernardo Arévalo, an anti-corruption figure who defied the odds and won the election last year in a landslide, has promised to empower the judiciary.

He has, however, been constrained by the Guatemalan prosecutor’s office – led by US-sanctioned Attorney General Consuelo Porras ­­– that has made two requests to withdraw his immunity and is accused of attempting to disqualify the results of his election.

Shaima Refaat Alareer, the daughter of a prominent Palestinian poet, was killed alongside her family in an Israeli airstrike on a house west of Gaza City on Friday, according to multiple sources, four months after her father died in a similar attack.

Alareer’s husband and their two-month-old son also died in the strike, according to eyewitnesses and family friends.

Shaima was the daughter of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed along with several other family members when an Israeli airstrike hit their home in the Shujayya neighborhood in December.

Residents of Al-Rimal neighborhood said Shaima and her family had been displaced from their home in Shujayya nearly four months ago.

Shaima had posted news of her motherhood in a recent message on her private Facebook account, according to Abu Toha. He shared a screenshot of her message to her deceased father.

“I have a beautiful news for you, I wish I could convey it to you while you are in front of me, I present to you your first grandchild. Do you know, my father, that you have become a grandfather?” Shaima wrote.

“This is your grandson Abd al-Rahman whom I have long imagined you carrying, but I never imagined that I would lose you early even before you see him.”

A 64-year-old British man is receiving “critical care” after he was attacked by a shark 10 meters from the shore in Scarborough, Trinidad and Tobago.

According to Farley Chavez Augustine, the Chief Secretary of Tobago, the man was attacked on Friday morning local time by what appeared to be a bull shark.

Augustine said that the victim’s left thigh and left arm from the elbow down were “severed,” and that the man’s stomach was lacerated. Some of his fingers were able to be reattached after surgery at Scarborough General Hospital, Augustine said in a press conference late Friday night.

Despite being in the ICU and sedated, the man is “stable and is doing well,” Augustine said. The man is mostly sedated because his “wounds will have him in significant pain,” he added.

The victim was vacationing in Tobago with his wife and friends, Augustine said, and was scheduled to return from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom on Friday. The group planned on taking one last swim before preparing to leave, which is when the shark attack took place.

State broadcaster Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) posted a video of an eyewitness describing the incident. Orion Jakerov, water sports manager at the Starfish Resort, said that the man was in “waist-deep to shoulder-high water,” with his back turned to the shark, though none of the group were originally aware of its presence.

The people accompanying the man “were trying to physically fight off the shark” after it attacked, Jakerov added.

The shark is believed to have been between eight and 10 foot long, Augustine said. The Tobago House of Assembly offered a $10,000 Trinidad and Tobago Dollar reward (around $1,470 USD) for the successful capture of the shark, but later recalled this bounty.

A number of beaches around the area of the incident have been temporarily closed, including the Buccoo Reef Marine Park, authorities said.

The British High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago posted travel guidance related to the attack on X, noting the closure of the marine park.

A Russian oil refinery in the southern Krasnodar region was impacted by a suspected Ukrainian drone attack on Saturday, according to local officials.

Regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev said Kyiv had launched the drones in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Russian state media outlet TASS reported that the oil refinery, in Slavyansk-on-Kuban in Krasnodar Krai, had partially suspended operations, citing Eduard Trudnev, security director for the Slavyansk ECO Group, which runs the facility.

Trudnev said work at the plant had been “partially suspended” after 10 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) flew into the refinery, causing a fire to break out.

“The presence of hidden damage is possible,” said Trudnev.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that Kyiv had launched 66 drones to attack the Krasnodar region, but all were intercepted.

Kondratyev said there were no casualties due to the refinery fire.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, four thermal energy plants were “severely damaged” after Russian attacks overnight, according to a statement from DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.

The DTEK statement added that “at this moment, power engineers are trying to eliminate the consequences of the attack.”

Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko posted on Facebook that “facilities in Dnipropetrovsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Lviv regions were attacked.”

A power engineer at one of the facilities suffered a concussion, Halushchenko said.

Serhii Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said in an update on Telegram that the region had experienced a “massive attack.”

Although air defenses intercepted 13 missiles in Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and Pavlohrad districts, energy facilities were damaged in Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih districts, triggering fires and injuring a 39-year-old man. Lysak also said there were “interruptions in the water supply in the Kryvyi Rih district.”

Svitlana Onyshchuk, head of the Ivano-Frankivsk regional military administration, said on Telegram on Saturday that a “critical infrastructure facility” in the Carpathian region was struck, causing a fire that has since been put out.

DTEK said that its thermal power plants have been attacked more than 170 times since the beginning of the war.

Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, said on Saturday that Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with “34 air-, land-, and sea-launched missiles,” with 21 of those missiles intercepted.

Hospitals evacuated

On Friday, patients at two Kyiv hospitals were evacuated after Belarus claimed soldiers were sheltering within, prompting fears in Ukraine of a possible attack on the facilities.

A video surfaced online showing the head of the Belarusian KGB security service alleging the two medical facilities were housing soldiers.

Belarusian KGB head Ivan Tertel claimed during a speech on Thursday that Ukrainian fighters were “hiding behind the backs of children,” and provided the addresses of the two hospitals located in northeast Kyiv. One of them is a children’s hospital.

“The enemy has practically announced its strike” and “even named the addresses,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in response, calling it “a provocation used as a pretext for a strike on our social critical infrastructure.”

Fears of a potential attack prompted authorities urgently to start moving patients to other medical facilities in the Ukrainian capital.

“This is an absolute lie and provocation of the enemy” aimed to justify strikes at the social infrastructure of the capital, the Kyiv city administration said in a statement.

Videos shared online showed medical personnel hurrying to move patients and equipment to ambulances that were awaiting to receive them.

By Friday evening, all patients were successfully moved to other medical facilities, Klitschko said, thanking the doctors, technical staff and ambulance workers for their “prompt and well-coordinated work.”

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) also denounced the claim that soldiers were based at the hospitals, calling it “a manifestation of information and psychological special operations that play into the hands of Russia.”

Ukrainian authorities are yet to say whether the urgent transfer has resulted in complications for any of the patients.