MOSCOW, March 13 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Vladimir Putin discussed measures to protect Russia’s critical infrastructure with the Security Council, the Kremlin said on Friday, after Ukraine attacked a major military factory and other targets.
Putin asked Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Transport Minister Vitaly Saveliev and Construction Minister Irek Fezulin to report on the proposed measures in his opening remarks, and the rest of the meeting was not made public.
Ukraine said on March 10 it used British Storm Shadow missiles to attack a factory producing semiconductor equipment and missile-integrated microchips in the city of Bryansk, just over 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
After the attack that killed six people, some Russian war bloggers expressed confusion that such a key site for Russia’s battlefield needs had not been evacuated during four years of war and was operating within range of Ukrainian missiles.
On February 25, Ukrainian drones attacked a chemical plant of fertilizer producer Akron in the town of Dorogobuzh, causing Russia’s fertilizer production to decrease by about 5%, just before the US-Israeli attack on Iran caused supply constraints.
Ukraine attempted to attack a pumping station run by gas giant Gazprom that exports gas to European customers through the TurkStream subsea pipeline, but the attack was foiled, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
On March 2, Sheskharis, a major oil terminal on Russia’s Black Sea coast, suspended loading after a Ukrainian drone strike injured five people, damaged 20 buildings and caused a fire at a fuel terminal.
Russia has slowed down or shut down mobile internet in Moscow and some other major cities as part of what the Kremlin says is security measures amid the escalating attacks.
While such outages were common across Russia during the war in Ukraine, Moscow has not experienced disruptions of this magnitude since the war began, with millions unable to use popular services such as maps or taxi apps.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
