Ukrainian drones strike Russian oil refinery and petrochemical complex

Ukraine announced on Thursday that drones it had used in Russia struck an oil refinery and a major oil-processing and petrochemical facility. This was part of a campaign intensifying to disrupt the oil and gas industry in Moscow.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has intensified drone attacks against Russian energy infrastructure, targeting the key facilities in an effort to reduce Moscow’s export revenues, and to stir up domestic unrest.

Russia, which targets Ukraine's infrastructure for energy regularly, calls these attacks "acts terrorism". As a result, there are gasoline shortages in some parts of Russia.

Sources in the SBU security service in Kyiv said that Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery overnight in central Russia's Bashkortostan Region, causing damage at a distillation plant there.

Radiy Khabirov is the head of the Bashkortostan Region in the Ural Mountains. He said that two Ukrainian drones attacked the Gazprom Niftekhim Salavat oil and petrochemical processing complex, which is one of Russia's biggest.

"We are assessing damage." Currently, we're putting out the flames. "All (emergency services) are present on the site", Khabirov wrote on Telegram.

He said that there were no injuries and the drones had been shot down by the security forces of the complex. Ukraine attacked the same complex in May 2024.

Last week, Ukrainian drones also attacked an oil refining facility in Ufa. This is the regional capital of Bashkortostan, located approximately 1,400 km (870 miles), from the Ukrainian border.

Separately, Ukraine’s military announced on Thursday that Special Operations Forces struck an oil refinery overnight in Russia’s Volgograd Region, temporarily stopping operations.

Andrei Bocharov said that the air defence forces of Volgograd had defeated what he described as a massive Ukrainian drone strike. He said that minor damage had been done to homes but did not mention damage to the refinery.

The Ukrainian claim about the Volgograd Refinery could not be independently verified.

Industry sources claim that the Volgograd Refinery, owned by Lukoil in 2024, will process 13.7 million tons of oil. This is 5.1% of all the volume processed at Russian refineries. Reporting by Anastasiia Mlenko in Kyiv and Tom Balmforth, London; Vladimir Soldatkin, Moscow. Writing by Andrew Osborn. Editing by Frances Kerry.

(source: Reuters)