A strong natural gas odor spread across the southern Russian city of Astrakhan following a drone strike on a gas processing facility earlier in the week, local authorities and media reported Wednesday.

Astrakhan gas processing plant shut down due to drone strike. The authorities deny the reports of an environmental disaster, the governor of the Astrakhan region of Russia, Igor Babushkin, says. He claims that “having received early warnings about the danger of the UAVs,

The governor of Russia's Astrakhan region told residents not to panic on Wednesday after its main city, close to a huge gas chemical complex that was attacked by Ukrainian drones this week, was enveloped in a cloud of natural gas.