The deputy head of Novokuli, a village in Daghestan, has claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian drone with a hunting rifle.
The local official, Ramzan Magomedov, claimed that he shot down one of eight drones that struck Daghestan on Wednesday morning using a Saiga rifle.
Magomedov told the security forces-linked Telegram channel Mash gor that he arrived on the outskirts of the village as soon as he heard the sounds of gunfire.
‘I drove out in the morning when I heard the first explosions. When I arrived, everyone was already gathered there. I saw drones flying around and started helping our men shoot at them. I had two or three rounds left, and I hit it with the last one’, Magomedov said.
He added that he was glad he managed to stop the drone because it was ‘heading directly for our village’.
‘It could have hit Palleta (local supermarket), and exploded, but luckily it fell in a soft spot and didn’t detonate’, Magomedov said.
The village of Novokuli, in Daghestan’s Novolaksky District, is situated about 11 kilometres from Makhachkala and has a population of around two thousand people.
According to the Russian Defence Ministry, a total of eight Ukrainian drones attacked Daghestan. Their target was the oil refinery owned by Dagnotekh LLC (‘Daghestani New Technologies’), as determined by the independent Russian media outlet ASTRA, which analysed footage of the attack.
Earlier, it was reported that a court had transferred ownership of the Dagnotekh refinery and the oil-transhipment company Dagnefteprodukt to the state. Both had previously belonged to the family of former Daghestani State Secretary Magomed-Sultan Magomedov, who is currently under investigation for fraud and money laundering. Open source data show that Dagnotekh’s refining capacity is around one million tonnes per year.
Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed the attack on the Makhachkala Oil Refinery in and stated that one of the plant’s processing units had been hit.
‘The main purpose of the refinery is to supply and store fuel for the Caspian Fleet naval base and to refuel the Russian occupiers’ military vessels. The plant’s annual capacity reaches up to one million tonnes,’ the statement read.
According to another pro-government Telegram channel, Shot, Ukrainian forces used new types of drones with foreign markings to attack Makhachkala. Previously, such UAVs had not been used for strikes deep inside Russian territory, being deployed only against border regions such as Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk.
Elizaveta Chukharova
