For the first time in more than two years of military operations in its neighbor, Russia has targeted the exposed part of Ukraine's largest underground gas storage facility.
Ukraine's state-owned gas producer, importer and distributor Naftogaz confirmed that the attack took place in the west of the country early on March 24, but did not specify exactly which facility.
First target
“The damaged aboveground infrastructure will need to be restored, but we have sufficient spare capacity,” Naftogaz CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov said. “There are no serious consequences for ensuring the operation of the underground storage facility, as the gas is located at a considerable depth.”
Mr. Chernyshov also said that the attack did not affect gas supplies to Ukrainian consumers and that agreements on storage and reserve capacity “are being fully implemented.”
However, an independent group of open-source intelligence researchers, WarMonitorUA, has published a map showing the flight path of the Russian cruise missiles during the attacks, with two heavy Kh-101 missiles approaching from the north towards the city of Stryi, Lviv region. The Kh-101 missiles are more than 7 meters long and carry a 400 kg cluster warhead.
The country's largest storage facility, Bilche-Volitsko-Ugerskoye, is located about 10 km north of Stryi. It can store up to 17 billion cubic metres of gas, more than half of Ukraine's total underground storage capacity.
Ukrainian authorities have released data on the movement of Russian cruise missiles to warn the public about impending threats.
Russia first attacked Ukraine's largest underground gas storage facility on March 24, 2024. Photo: Hindustan Times
Russia said the Bilche-Volitsko-Ugerskoye facility was targeted by about 20 cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and suicide drones, but this claim could not be verified.
Maxim Kozytsky, head of the Lviv region military administration, said on social media that “a key infrastructure facility” near Stryi was hit by two waves of attacks on March 24, the first by cruise missiles and drones, and the second, five hours later, by air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles.
Russia has repeatedly attacked gas distribution pipelines in the north and east of the country during the war. However, before this weekend’s attack, it had never targeted the large-diameter pipelines used to transport Russian gas through Ukraine to European customers or the country’s network of underground storage facilities.
"Nemesis" of Russian weapons
Officials in the capital Kiev and Naftogaz have repeatedly warned that Ukraine will not extend its five-year gas transit deal with Gazprom, which expires at the end of this year, a position backed by the European Union (EU), which aims to completely halt imports of Russian gas by 2027.
Gazprom has shipped about 42 million cubic metres of gas a day through Ukraine to Europe this year, and officials in Moscow say Russia is ready to resume gas deliveries next year.
Sergiy Makogon, former head of the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine (GTSOU), said Kiev should immediately stop the transit of Russian gas in response to the attack instead of waiting for the contract to expire.
Naftogaz has offered European gas companies a place to store gas purchased during the off-season for later use when demand peaks. An estimated 2.5 billion cubic metres of gas were stored in the Eastern European country last year.
In February, the company said it aimed to double the amount of gas that European companies would pump into temporary storage in the second and third quarters of this year for the coming winter.
Mr. Makogon also estimated that “just two US-made Patriot air defense systems would be enough to protect” the largest underground storage facilities located in western Ukraine near the borders with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.
A rocket explosion is seen over Kiev during a Russian missile attack on March 24, 2024. Ukraine is deploying US-made Patriot air defense batteries to protect key cities. Photo: Arab News
In a separate development earlier this week, Ukrainian officials also singled out the US-made Patriot air defense system in a request for military aid to Western allies, urging the transfer of the sophisticated weapon to protect its cities at a time of deepening concerns about the future of military aid to Kiev.
“Send us the Patriot batteries,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Politico in an interview published on March 25.
“If we had enough air defense systems, namely Patriots, we would be able to protect not only the lives of our people but also our economy from destruction,” the Ukrainian diplomat said.
According to the Ukrainian military, Kiev used its existing Patriot systems to shoot down a series of Russian aircraft and the system is said to be a “nemesis”, neutralizing a number of Kinzhal missiles that the Kremlin describes as unstoppable hypersonic weapons .
Minh Duc (According to Upstream Online, Newsweek)
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