Ukrainian drones strike Kirishi, home to Russia’s second-largest refinery KINEF, 800 km from the border – governor confirms – sources

Ukrainian drones flew about 800 kilometres north of the border overnight into Monday, November 9, and struck the Kirishi industrial zone in the Leningrad region, where the KINEF refinery, Russia’s second largest by capacity, operates. Governor Alexander Drozdenko himself confirmed the strikes on the industrial zone. On the refinery itself, Ukrainian monitoring channels such as Exilenova+ and Supernova+ reported powerful explosions and circulated video of large fireballs lighting the night sky.

NASA’s FIRMS system, which detects thermal anomalies, recorded multiple hotspots inside the facility.

Drozdenko’s updates hour by hour

The governor declared a drone danger for the entire region shortly after 02:15 Moscow time and warned of possible mobile internet slowdowns. The first two downings were announced an hour and a half later, and within ten minutes the number rose to 38. In the 04:40 update Mr Drozdenko spoke of 81 drones downed, of “drone strikes on the industrial zone of the city of Kirishi” and of debris that fell into an apartment in the city. The family living there was moved out, with no need to evacuate the building’s entrance.

In a later post he clarified that nobody was hurt in the apartment and said debris also fell on the roof of an apartment block in Vsevolozhsk, near St Petersburg. The alert ended at 05:29, with the final tally reaching 113 drones downed over the region, according to his post. Shortly afterwards the Russian defence ministry announced that 430 Ukrainian drones in total were shot down over 15 regions, among them the Leningrad and Pskov regions, the Moscow area and Crimea. Flight restrictions were also imposed at St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport.

The Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery belongs to Surgutneftegas, can process about 20 million tonnes of crude a year and covers over 6% of Russia’s refining, with products that also supply the armed forces. It is under Western sanctions, including American ones. It is not the first time it has been targeted: on May 5 it briefly stopped operating when Ukrainian drones damaged three of its four crude distillation units, and it was attacked again on August 30.

Kirishi adds to a series of strikes on Russian refineries in recent days, after Afipsky in the Krasnodar Territory and the Yaroslavl refinery, where the local governor confirmed damage.