A fire broke out at a fuel depot in Belgorod, a Russian city near the Ukrainian border, the governor told the Telegram channel on Friday morning. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, accused Ukraine of being behind the flames without providing further details. “The fire in the oil depot was caused as a result of an air raid by two helicopters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that entered the territory of the Russian Federation flying at low altitude. “There are no casualties,” Gladkov said. CNN is unable to verify this claim. The fire “suffocated fuel tanks”, Russian state media TASS reported, citing the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations. A still image taken from a video shows a fuel depot burning in the Russian city of Belgorod on April 1. (Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations / Reuters) Two warehouse workers were injured in the blaze, but their lives are not in danger, Gladkov said. Residents near the depot are being evacuated, he added. Emergency services are on the scene to fight the fire and there is no danger to the city’s population, Gladkov said. About 16,000 cubic meters (3.52 million gallons) of fuel are being burned in storage, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported on Friday, citing emergency services. Eight tanks with 2,000 cubic meters of fuel each are burning and there is a risk of the fire spreading to another eight tanks, emergency services said, according to RIA Novosti. CNN has asked Ukraine for comment on reports of a alleged Ukrainian helicopter strike on a fuel storage facility in Belgorod. Bohdan Senyk, head of the public affairs department of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said there was “no information” about the incident. Putin briefed: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the fire. “The president has been informed about Belgorod,” Peshkov told a news conference. “You know that the Ministry of Emergency Situations was sent there. “Measures are being taken to reorganize the fuel supply points so that what happened does not in any way affect the level of supply of all the necessary types of fuel.” The Russian army claimed air superiority over Ukraine. “Aviation superiority during an operation is an absolute fact,” Peshkov said. “And for what happened, we should probably not give assessments, but the law enforcement agencies.” On Wednesday, Gladkov said separate explosions at an ammunition dump in the Belgorod area late Tuesday night may have been caused by a fire, citing preliminary information. Frame: Belgorod is located near the northeastern Ukrainian-Russian border, beyond which is the largest Ukrainian city, Kharkiv. The Belgorod area was used as a base for Russian forces shortly before the invasion, and Kharkiv has since been relentlessly bombarded with rockets. Video shows large fire in Russian fuel depot:
