MOSCOW: A drone fell on an oil depot in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, local governor Vladimir Vladimirov said on Friday.
It was the second suspected Ukrainian attack in consecutive days on Russian fuel and energy targets, following a lull of about seven weeks since a fuel facility in Tula was attacked on Sept. 10.
There were no casualties in the incident at the Svetlograd oil depot, Vladimirov said on Telegram.
Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, posted a CCTV video purportedly showing the attack on the oil depot. The video showed that at least one of several fuel tanks was swiftly engulfed by a fireball.
On Thursday, several fuel and energy facilities were targeted in a Ukrainian drone attack on the central Russian region of Bashkortostan, home to Bashneft, a major oil company controlled by Russia’s leading oil producer, Rosneft .
Bashneft operates several refineries in the region, playing a significant role in Russia’s energy infrastructure.
The attacks come days after the Financial Times reported early-stage talks between Ukraine and Russia about potentially halting airstrikes on each other’s energy facilities. The Kremlin dismissed the report.
Russia has called such attacks terrorism, while Ukraine, which stepped up the drone strikes on Russian energy facilities since the start of the year, has said it is striking back in retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s defense committee, said in comments to Life media channel earlier this week, that there were no talks on halting the attacks.
“We are not going to spare anyone,” he said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in September that Russia had knocked out the gigawatt equivalent of over half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The European Union aims to restore 2.5 GW of capacity, about 15 percent of the country’s needs, she said, referring to proposed EU-funded repairs.

MELBOURNE: An Australian judge ruled on Friday that anti-immigration party leader Sen. Pauline Hanson breached racial discrimination laws by crudely telling Pakistan-born Sen. Mehreen Faruqi to return to her homeland.

Faruqi sued Hanson in the Federal Court over a 2022 exchange on the social media platform X, then called Twitter, under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act that bans public actions and statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, color or national or ethnic origin.

Following the news that Queen Elizabeth II had died, Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, posted: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized peoples.”

The 70-year-old leader of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party replied that Faruqi had immigrated to take “advantage” of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan, using an expletive.

Hanson has been known for her views on race since her first speech to Parliament in 1996 in which she warned Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” because of the nation’s non-discriminatory immigration policy. She once wore a burqa in the Senate as part of a campaign to have Islamic face coverings banned.

Faruqi, a 61-year-old qualified engineer, moved to Australia with her husband in 1992 as skilled economic migrants.

Justice Angus Stewart found that Hanson had engaged in “seriously offensive” and intimidating behavior.

The post was racist, nativist and anti-Muslim, Stewart said.

“It is a strong form of racism,” he said.

Stewart ordered Hanson to delete the offensive post and to pay Faruqi’s legal costs. Stewart expected those costs would “amount to a fairly substantial sum.”

Faruqi welcomed the ruling as a vindication for “every single person who has been told to go back to where they came from. And believe me, there are too many of us who have been subjected to this ultimate racist slur, far too many times in this country. Today’s ruling tells us that telling someone to go back to where they came from is a strong form of racism,” Faruqi told reporters.

“Today is a good day for people of color, for Muslims and all of us who have been working so hard to build an anti-racist society,” she said.

Hanson said she was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling and would appeal.

The verdict demonstrated an “inappropriately broad application”of the section of the Racial Discrimination Act that she had breached, particularly in how that section impinged upon freedom of political expression, Hanson said in a statement.

Hanson’s lawyers argued that that her post was exempt from the law because of constitutionally implied freedom of political communication.

Hanson said she considered the queen’s death a matter of public interest and that Faruqi’s views on the death were also a matter of public interest.

Stewart found that Hanson’s tweet did not respond to any point made in Faruqi’s tweet.

“Sen. Hanson’s tweet was merely an angry ad hominem attack devoid of discernible content (or comment) in response to what Sen. Faruqi had said,” Stewart wrote in his decision.

Stewart described Hanson’s testimony as “generally unreliable,” rejecting her claim that she did not know Faruqi’s religion when she posted.

Hanson told the court she had called for a ban on Muslim immigration in the past, but she described that as her personal opinion rather than her minor party’s policy.

She conceded she had once said in a media interview she would not sell her house to a Muslim, but would not say whether she had meant what she had said.

Australia is an increasingly multicultural society. Australians born overseas or have at least one overseas-born parent became a majority in the latest census in 2021.