A major oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region was set ablaze overnight following a reported Ukrainian drone attack, the latest in an escalating campaign by Kyiv to cripple Moscow’s energy infrastructure and squeeze the revenues funding its war machine.
Photos and videos circulating on Russian Telegram channels purport to show large flames rising from storage tanks at the refinery in Slavyansk-na-Kubani, a city in southern Russia located across the Kerch Strait from occupied Crimea. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear. The Kyiv Independent, which first reported the strike, said it could not immediately verify the claims, and Ukraine’s military had not commented at the time of publication.
The reported attack comes just days after Ukrainian drones struck two oil refineries in Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan on 25 June, and follows a sustained campaign that has been steadily degrading Russia’s domestic fuel supply. Over 20 Russian regions have now imposed restrictions on fuel sales as shortages bite, with the strikes hitting some of the country’s most strategically significant facilities.
Among the recent high-profile targets, a strike on the Moscow Oil Refinery on 19 June halted operations at one of Russia’s largest refineries, a facility responsible for around 40 per cent of the Moscow fuel market and the majority of the region’s petrol supply. Days later, the Lukoil-Nizhegorodorgsintez refinery in Kstovo — Russia’s fourth-largest — went offline following another drone strike, Reuters reported.
Krasnodar Krai has become a frequent target for Ukrainian long-range drone operations, given its proximity to occupied Crimea and its significance as an energy hub. Kyiv has made attacking Russian oil and gas infrastructure a central pillar of its strategy to reduce the revenues Moscow relies upon to sustain its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year.
