Drone attack on the Yaroslavl refinery: governor confirms damage at a plant that fuels Russia’s war machine

Ukrainian drones struck the Yaroslavl refinery, one of Russia’s five largest refining plants, before dawn on Tuesday, November 3, starting a fire at its facilities. Regional governor Mikhail Yevrayev confirmed damage to the plant’s infrastructure and wrote that two workers were injured by fragments and taken to hospital. Emergency services were working to extinguish the fire.

Fragments of downed drones broke windows in apartment blocks and houses and damaged residents’ cars, Yevrayev added. He claimed that air defences shot down 124 drones during the night. The extent of the damage at the refinery is still being assessed.

At least five fires in the industrial zone

The drone-threat alert sounded in the area at around 03:00, and a missile warning was issued later, Ukrainska Pravda writes. Residents spoke of loud explosions. The Ukrainian Telegram monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported three separate fires in the city’s industrial zone. An OSINT analyst at the Russian outlet Astra examined photographs and video sent by readers and concluded that the Slavneft-YANOS facility, also known as Yaroslavnefteorgsintez, was indeed burning, recording at least five fires.

Fuel for the military

The plant is about 250 kilometres north-east of Moscow and processes some 15 million tonnes of crude a year, the Kyiv Independent writes. It belongs to Slavneft, which is jointly controlled by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, and produces petrol, diesel, fuel oil, aviation kerosene, lubricants and paraffin. It supplies Russia’s Central and Northwestern Federal Districts and the Moscow region. Its customers include airports and plants of the Russian defence industry, and military aircraft and vehicles are fuelled from it.

It is not the first time Yaroslavl has been targeted. On August 28 a Ukrainian strike damaged the AVT-4 primary distillation unit. On September 17 the AVT-3 was hit, accounting for about 40 per cent of the plant’s total capacity, and the refinery stopped operating at that point. The damage to the AVT-3 had been announced by Ukraine’s General Staff.

Kyiv has stepped up attacks on the Russian oil industry, aiming to limit fuel supplies and the revenue that funds the war. Volodymyr Zelensky said in October that the “ban is over” on strikes against Russian refineries, while Donald Trump has called the Ukrainian strikes a “shame” and is pressing the Ukrainian leadership to stop attacks on Russian oil facilities. The new strike comes days before talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11.