Two Ukrainian military helicopters struck a fuel depot in the Russian city Belgorod on Friday, according to the regional governor, making it the first accusation of a Ukrainian airstrike in Russia since Moscow launched its assault on Kyiv.
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Also Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired two top security officials on Friday who he claimed were "traitors."
Video images of the purported attack posted online showed what looked like several missiles being fired from low altitude, followed by an explosion.
Regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the helicopters struck the facility in Belgorod, some 22 miles from the Ukrainian border, after entering Russia at a low altitude.
Two workers were injured in the resulting blaze, Gladkov added, while some areas of the city were being evacuated.
However, Russian oil firm Rosneft – which owns the fuel depot – said nobody was hurt in the fire.
Russia's Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said the incident would not affect the region's fuel supplies, and Governor Roman Starovoit of the neighboring Kursk region called on the population not to stockpile fuel.
An ammunition depot near Belgorod also caught fire on Wednesday, causing a series of blasts.
Russian gas, meanwhile, was still flowing to Europe on Friday despite a deadline set by President Vladimir Putin to cut it off unless customers start paying in roubles, Moscow's strongest threat to retaliate for sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.
Negotiations aimed at ending the war were set to resume by video link, with Ukrainian forces making more advances on the ground in a counterattack that has repelled the Russians from Kyiv and broken the sieges of some cities in the north and east.
After failing to capture a single major Ukrainian city in five weeks of war, Russia says it has shifted its focus to the southeast, where it has backed separatists since 2014.
The area includes the port of Mariupol, the scene of the war's worst humanitarian emergency, where the United Nations believes thousands of people have died after more than a month under Russian siege and relentless bombardment.
The Red Cross had hoped to begin evacuations from the city on Friday with the first aid convoy, but Ukraine said Russia had prevented buses from reaching it on Thursday.
Western sanctions imposed over the war have cut off Russia from much of world trade, but exceptions have been carved out for oil and gas.
Putin signed an order setting a Friday deadline for buyers from "unfriendly" countries to pay for gas using roubles or be cut off, a demand Western customers have rejected as an attempt to rewrite contracts that call for payment in euros. Germany, the biggest buyer, called it "blackmail," and had warned this week of a potential emergency if supplies were curtailed.
But there was no sign on Friday of an immediate interruption. Flows remained steady through two of the three main pipelines bringing Russian gas into Europe - Nord Stream 1 across the Baltic Sea, and into Slovakia over Ukraine.
Flows through the other main route, the Yamal-Europe pipeline over Belarus, had reversed direction, now bringing gas from Germany to Poland, but this occurs occasionally and did not necessarily indicate a new policy.
Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas giant, said it was continuing to supply Europe via Ukraine in line with requests from consumers that were down only fractionally from Thursday.
A source had told Reuters that some contracts involved gas being delivered before payments were due, suggesting the taps might not be turned off immediately.
Over the past 10 days, Ukrainian forces have recaptured suburbs near Kyiv, broken the siege of Sumy in the east and driven back Russian forces advancing on Mykolaiv in the south.
In the latest Ukrainian advance, Britain's Ministry of Defense said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had recaptured villages linking Kyiv with the besieged northern city of Chernihiv.
At talks this week, Moscow said it would reduce offensives near Kyiv and Chernihiv to build trust at peace talks. Kyiv and its allies say Russia is pulling troops out in those areas, not as a goodwill gesture but to regroup because they have taken heavy losses.
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The Russians are still bombarding cities even as they pull out, and could be preparing a major new assault in the southeast, where they say they want to "liberate" the Donbas region claimed by the separatists, including Mariupol.
Ukraine's general staff said Russian troops had started a partial withdrawal from the Kyiv region towards Belarus and were taking looted vehicles with them.
Zelenskyy warned of "battles ahead" in Donbas and the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.
"We still need to go down a very difficult path to get everything we want," he said.
In an early-morning address, Zelenskyy also announced he had sacked the chief of the Main Department of the Security Service of Ukraine Naumov Andriy Olehovych.
Zelenskyy also removed the head of the SBU in Kherson, Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych, stripping the pair of their titles and labeling them "anti-heroes."
The Ukrainian president accused them of failing in their duty to protect Ukraine's "freedom and independence" but did not provide any further detail.
"Now I do not have time to deal with all the traitors but gradually they will all be punished," Zelenskyy said in a live address on social media.
He then issued a broader warning that officers who have "not decided where their homeland is" and have violated Ukraine's oath of allegiance, will "inevitably be deprived of senior military ranks."
"Random generals don't belong here," he continued.
