KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian drones struck a major refinery deep inside Russia, military officials said Thursday, the fourth in three days in Kyiv’s ongoing campaign to choke Moscow’s vital oil sector.
Russia is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, with oil providing an economic mainstay as its military tries to push deeper into Ukraine in a slow and costly advance more than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.
The attacks have dented Russia’s refining capacity, causing shortages at gas stations. Kyiv officials say the onslaught is meant to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek a peace deal, but there's no sign that strategy is working.
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refining and petrochemical complex in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan overnight, causing a fire at the facility.
The complex, located southeast of Moscow about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from Ukraine’s border, is one of Russia’s largest such facilities, the General Staff said in a Telegram post. The plant processes up to 74 million barrels of oil annually, producing gasoline, diesel fuel and other products, it said.
Bashkortostan Gov. Radiy Khabirov said only that a drone attack wounded two civilians and started a fire in an industrial zone of Salavat.
Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer whose giant warehouses have repeatedly been struck by Ukrainian drones, said a fire started at one of its facilities in the Salavat industrial zone after the overnight attack. The company said the facility was evacuated but that goods were not being stored there.
The attack came a day after Ukrainian missiles and drones blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea.
Elsewhere, four explosives experts from Russia’s Emergency Ministry and a security guard were killed Thursday after an unspecified Ukrainian weapon blew up in Sevastopol, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor for the port city in illegally annexed Crimea.
They were inspecting the site of a Ukrainian attack when “an enemy weapon detonated,” he said.
Also in Sevastopol, a Russian serviceman was killed by an explosion, and a Russian woman, allegedly acting on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence agencies, was detained as a suspect, the Crimean branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service said Thursday.
It was not possible to independently verify either side’s reports.
Meanwhile, a Russian refinery in Orsk that was hit by Ukrainian drones earlier this week has suspended operations, Orenburg region Gov. Yevgeny Solntsev said.
He said that “key infrastructure, which cannot be restored at this time” was attacked, including foreign equipment, and repairs could take up to six months because of international sanctions, Solntsev said in a rare public admission in Russia of the problems Ukrainian attacks are causing.
Ukraine’s General Staff had reported striking the Orsk refinery near the border with Kazakhstan on Tuesday.
Russia has responded by hammering Ukraine with ballistic missiles, jet-powered drones and glide bombs, all of which are hard to intercept. The strikes have killed more than 16,000 civilians since the war began, according to the United Nations.
Russian attacks featuring 133 long-range drones killed at least four people and wounded eight others across Ukraine overnight, officials said.
A jet-powered Shahed drone struck a passenger train in the southern Odesa region, killing the engineer and his assistant, said Ukraine’s state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia.
A Russian drone killed two men Wednesday evening in the southern city of Kherson, regional military administration chief Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Ukraine desperately wants more U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles that can counter Russia's ballistic missiles, but stocks of the air defense system reportedly are low because of the Iran war.
Ukraine has two and a half times fewer Patriot interceptors than in 2025, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he makes calls every day to try to source some more.
He said he is asking the United States to sell 5% of the interceptor missiles they have in stock to help Ukraine make it through next winter, when Russia’s strikes focus on the power grid, according to an interview with CNN broadcast Wednesday, parts of which he posted online. So far, he said he has obtained only 1%.
In the first half of this year, European countries paid U.S. defense companies at least 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) for military equipment they sent to Ukraine, according to a report Thursday by Germany’s Kiel Institute, which tracks assistance to Kyiv.
The Trump administration won’t provide its own aid to Ukraine but is allowing other countries to buy U.S. equipment that is sent on.
Military aid provided to Ukraine in the first half of 2026 was close to last year’s level, the Kiel Institute said, but financial and humanitarian aid was 41% lower than in 2025.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin, second left, shakes hands with Sakhalin Region Governor Valery Limarenko at an airport in Kurilsk on the Iturup Island, the largest of the Kuril Islands of Russia's fareast, on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
MOUNT TABOR, Israel (AP) — Sister Mayela wears her black veil and habit as she walks to work near where another Catholic nun was violently attacked in Jerusalem’s Old City — but she’s now accompanied by a Jewish volunteer for protection.
Many Christians in Israel, who make up less than 2% of the country’s population, are worried visible signs of their faith will draw harassment, which has increased as multiple conflicts grip the region.
“I’m scared after the sister was beat up,” said Sister Mayela, a Mexican nun who’s lived in Jerusalem on and off for more than two decades. “Before, one could live with more confidence. Some people spat, some said hi. Now we have to live trusting in God.”
She finds resilience in her faith — and in support from Israelis like the volunteers. Even that, though, didn’t prevent a teen from spitting right behind her as they passed a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews recently. The teen said she was only clearing her throat, but the volunteer reported it to police.
Incidents like that are among the challenges for Christians in Israel, particularly since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, plunged the country back into war and polarization. But interfaith leaders and researchers are encouraged by better policing and prosecution as well as the recent appointment of a government envoy to the Christian world, who is Greek Orthodox.
In northern Israel, many Christians say they feel the state isn’t doing enough to protect them from crime because they’re not Jewish. But those concerns didn’t stop groups of Catholics from joining a recent joyous pilgrimage on Mount Tabor, where the Gospels say Jesus appeared transfigured alongside the Jewish prophets Moses and Elijah.
“In a world where darkness is filling the hearts of people, we need to diffuse God’s light to other people,” said Sister Muna, the nun who led one youth group.
For many Christians and Jews, protecting coexistence in the Holy Land is a moral imperative after their own long histories of religious persecution.
“I don’t want Christians to go out of their house in Jerusalem … and have fear,” said Yisca Harani, the Jewish Israeli educator and activist who escorted Sister Mayela. “I’ve gone through this 2,000 years in my Jewish history. I’m not going to let that happen.”
In the Old City, Jewish men in black hats and tzitzit tassels, Muslim women in hijabs and Christian priests in flowing robes walk past each other daily in the maze of stone alleyways. Many are headed to pray at the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. These are some of the most sacred sites respectively for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and they are close to each other.
“If you stroll around in your habit, sooner or later you’ll get some spitting next to you,” said the Rev. Alberto Pari, who leads interfaith dialogue and Christian-Jewish relations as secretary to the Custody of the Holy Land, the Catholic order ministering to holy sites across the region. “But it’s important not to generalize, because that unleashes antisemitism.”
Religious Freedom Data Center, the organization that Harani founded to track harassment of Christians, has recorded a near-tripling of incidents in Jerusalem from four years ago to the last three months recorded — about one a day now — virtually all by Jewish religious nationalists.
A Jewish man from a settlement in the occupied West Bank was indicted in the violent attack on the nun in April. The French Biblical and Archeological School of Jerusalem where the nun is a researcher expects “effective prosecution at the criminal and civil levels,” said the school’s director, Friar Olivier Poquillon.
Among those reaching out to Catholic leaders to denounce the attack and offer support was Ambassador George Deek, Israel's new envoy tasked with building what he calls the “special relationship” between Christians and the country, to both keep Christians safe and partner on issues like fighting antisemitism.
“We believe that every incident against Christians is immoral, illegal and should be prosecuted. That’s exactly what we are going to do,” Deek told The Associated Press. “We want to make sure that Israel continues to prosper and grow as a place where Christians can not only survive, but they can thrive.”
Around the time that the nun was attacked, two other incidents drew global condemnation. An Israeli soldier smashed a crucifix in a family garden and another stuck a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon, where the military is fighting Hezbollah militants. The soldiers involved received military prison sentences.
Most Israelis find harassment unacceptable. But Jewish religious nationalists, particularly uneducated young men, remain a threat, said John Munayer of the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, an interreligious organization in Jerusalem.
Their hostility to Christians is grounded in the history of persecution of Jews in Christian-majority European countries, in faith practices they see as idol-worshipping, and in a “general intolerance” for anyone who’s not Jewish near sacred areas like the Western Wall, Munayer said.
Then there’s the overhanging trauma of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since most local Christians in Israel and the occupied West Bank are Palestinian.
In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, Jewish settlers recently cut through house fences and destroyed fruit and vegetable gardens, said the Rev. Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church.
“All the people here are afraid,” he said. “Settlers come and go every day.”
Israel’s army declared the village a closed military zone earlier this week to curb the attacks. But concerns about Israel’s ability and willingness to rein in the settlers remain even among evangelicals, who are among the staunchest Christian supporters of Israel.
“What happens in Taybeh is really troubling,” said David Parsons, spokesperson for International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. “Israeli leaders have realized for some time that Christian support for their nation is not only vital, it’s a strategic interest.”
And yet since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, “generalized fear and skepticism” pervaded all interreligious work, Pari said. The interfaith music institute he directs, Magnificat, was invited to play at a peace march in Jerusalem. But when the Palestinian members saw that the stage had been set up by an Old City gate flanked by Israeli flags, they refused to play.
“I felt a real failure,” Pari said. “We think that as Christians, we have a very important role to patch things back together. ... It will be difficult, but we can do it.”
That faith-grounded resilience prevailed among the Mount Tabor pilgrims, who gathered on the mountain to celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration last week. Rising interfaith tensions and crime have driven many of the area’s Christians to emigrate, several said.
“It’s very difficult that we keep our identity as Christians in the Middle East, but it’s the most important,” said John Akleh, 20, who came with Sister Muna’s group.
Ten pilgrims from nearby Nazareth — where Jesus grew up — started the climb at 4:15 a.m. led by the Rev. Fadi Shallufi in a yearly tradition they’ve maintained even in wartime.
“We will have a lot of sacrifice, but you will be sure in this land something will change,” Shallufi told them as he celebrated Mass in the mountaintop basilica.
Associated Press journalists Ibrahim Hazboun and Moshe Edri contributed from Jerusalem.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Tents of Christian pilgrims who spent overnight in the forest next to the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, on Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Religious souvenirs for sale are placed on a stand for Christian pilgrims who climb to the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, on Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Nuns pose for photograph with the view from the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Priests and nuns make their way to the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, on Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Rev. Fadi Shallufi leads Catholic pilgrims on a Eucharistic procession climbing to the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, on Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
A priest enters the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, on Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
A Christian pilgrim attends a Mass in the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, northern Israel, Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
