Ukraine has launched large-scale strikes against Russian tankers transporting fuel to occupied Crimea, Ukrainian officials said, as Kyiv seeks to disrupt Moscow’s military logistics on the peninsula.
The campaign follows Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, including the Omsk refinery in Siberia, Russia’s largest, located about 2,500 km (1,550 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian officials say the attacks have contributed to fuel shortages in Russia.
Commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Brovdi, said Ukrainian forces struck 19 Russian tankers, a cargo ship and a ferry between July 6 and July 8, including nine tankers during the night of July 7.
Ukrainian Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk told public broadcaster Suspilne that Russia had shifted fuel deliveries to Crimea by sea after Ukraine disrupted overland supply routes.
“They had few options left. It’s either a land corridor or a sea connection,” Pletenchuk said. “As far as we know, they don’t use the Kerch Bridge for such transportation in the necessary volumes.”
The Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, was damaged in a truck bombing in 2022 that ignited a fuel train travelling across the bridge.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Financial Times that Ukraine had shifted its focus to Crimea after disabling Russia’s oil offloading terminal at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.
“We were slowing down the militarisation of our peninsula occupied by Russia,” Zelenskiy said.
“We cut off the logistics and took control of the fuel and energy complex.”
The Ukrainian president’s representative office in Crimea said the strikes had triggered what it described as “a management crisis” on the peninsula.
It said fuel sales to civilians had been suspended in Sevastopol and that power outages had affected more than a dozen districts.
Ukraine said it also carried out additional strikes on military targets in Crimea over the past week, including attacks on the Saky and Hvardiiske (Guardske) airfields and the Kerch oil transshipment terminal.
Russia also came under renewed drone attacks, with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin saying Ukraine launched one of its largest drone attacks on the Russian capital in two years.
Russian authorities said they intercepted more than 400 drones headed toward Moscow on July 7, the opening day of a NATO summit in Ankara.
“When our drones weren’t flying to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Putin didn’t think much about it. He understood that the war was far from the Kremlin,” Zelenskiy told the Financial Times.
“When not a hundred drones, but a thousand would start flying to Moscow … this would be a moment like a new page on the path to ending the war,” he said.
Acting Executive Secretary of the Energy Commission, Adwoa Serwaa Bondzie, said Ghana’s energy-efficiency programme began in the mid-2000s with the introduction of standards and labelling requirements for refrigerating appliances before expanding to air conditioners and lighting products.
Bondzie said the commission’s refrigerator rebate and exchange programme demonstrated how regulation, incentives and public awareness could encourage the adoption of energy-efficient appliances.
She added that the commission had strengthened its testing, verification and institutional frameworks to support compliance and enforcement, and highlighted Ghana’s role in harmonising energy-efficiency standards across the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). 
Organised by the Africa Energy Technology Centre, the conference brings together heads of state, ministers, institutional investors, technology developers, researchers and development partners to promote intra-African energy trade, industrialisation and technological development.
The Centre described the presidential endorsement as a significant milestone that would strengthen its mission of advancing African-led solutions to the continent’s energy challenges and accelerate Africa’s energy transition agenda.
Speaking during the engagement, AETC leadership said the initiatives form part of a broader strategy to position Africa not merely as a participant in the global energy transition, but as one of its architects.
According to the Centre, the strategy focuses on expanding regional manufacturing capacity, strengthening collaborative innovation networks and supporting homegrown entrepreneurship to commercialise African-owned intellectual property in global markets.
Akumah said the Centre’s objective was to build an energy future that is “designed, built, owned and exported by Africans.”
She added that Africa should no longer be viewed as a passive consumer in the global energy transition but as a continent capable of becoming a leading producer and exporter of energy technologies, driven by African innovation, expertise and ownership. 