Russia said on Thursday that its forces had carried out strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, ammunition depots and drone facilities, while Ukraine on the same day reported attacks on multiple Russian oil refineries.
In its latest briefing on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that over the past 24 hours, Russian military forces had shot down a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet, while its air defense systems intercepted one guided bomb and 250 Ukrainian drones.
Also on Thursday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced that its troops launched early-morning strikes on multiple oil refineries in Russia and carried out attacks on Russian military targets in the Donetsk Region.
Russia News Agency reported the same day that an oil facility in Russia's Tatarstan Republic had been attacked by Ukrainian drones, triggering a fire that was later extinguished. The fire did not affect normal operations of the equipment and caused no casualties.
Regarding the recent drone attack on the Russian presidential residence, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it had decoded data from a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) involved in the attack, confirming that its mission was to attack the Russian presidential residence.
The ministry later said the decoded data had been given to the U.S. side.
According to the statement, Russian forces shot down multiple Ukrainian drones on the night of Dec 29 in the airspace of the Novgorod region, and managed to retrieve a flight assignment file stored in the memory of one downed UAV.
The examination of the routing data showed that "the Ukrainian drone attack on Dec 29 targeted one of the facilities of the Russian President's residence in the Novgorod region," the statement said.
The findings were consistent with an earlier announcement by the ministry that Ukrainian forces has launched an attack on the Russian Presidential Residence with 91 UAVs. Forty-one of those were shot down over the Novgorod region, while the rest were intercepted en route, according to the ministry. An examination of the wreckage found that one of the drones was carrying six kilograms of explosives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Dec 29 denied the attack, calling it a pure fabrication and accusing Moscow of using the claims as a pretext to escalate attacks and obstruct the efforts to end the conflict.
Russia reports strikes on Ukrainian targets, Ukraine says it hits Russian oil refineries
