Ukrainian UAVs raided Russia’s largest oil refinery

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army today said that its forces conducted a long-range attack using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) targeting the Omsk oil refinery, a facility located about 2,700 km from territory controlled by Ukraine and near the Russia-Kazakhstan border.

The raid caused a fire at the Omsk oil refinery, the Ukrainian military said. This is considered one of the longest-range raids that Kiev has ever carried out since the conflict broke out.

Governor of the Omsk region Vitaly Khotsenko admitted that Ukraine attacked the oil refinery in the area, but Russian air defense forces prevented most of the UAVs from participating in the raid.

He added that the attack did not cause any casualties and that emergency response forces were on the scene. Image okay Moscow Times The announcement showed large plumes of smoke rising from the Omsk oil refinery. It is unclear to what extent this facility was damaged.

Reuters Quoting sources familiar with the matter, this is the largest oil refinery in Russia, owned by Gazprom Neft, specializing in producing gasoline, diesel, aviation gasoline and other petroleum products, including fuel for the Russian military.

The plant last year processed about 23 million tons of oil, equivalent to about 460,000 barrels per day.

The Omsk oil refinery was previously believed to be out of range of attack during Ukraine’s deep raid campaign against Russian territory. However, the Ukrainian Special Forces said that the raid on July 6 damaged many important equipment of the plant, especially the crude oil distillation tower, which is considered the lifeblood of the entire system.

Ukrainian officials said Omsk was “the last facility among Russia’s 11 largest gasoline producers” to be raided, thereby emphasizing the scale of the country’s campaign against Russia’s oil refining industry.

In addition to Omsk, authorities in other Russian regions said the Ukrainian army last night also raided Ust-Luga and Vysotsk ports, which process oil exports on the Baltic Sea, and other targets in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions.

Ukraine has recently regularly attacked military and energy infrastructure deep within Russia and territories controlled by Moscow to weaken the enemy’s ability to maintain its fighting machine. President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 25 announced a 40-day “long-range sanctions” raid campaign to pressure Russia to end hostilities.

President Vladimir Putin late last month admitted that Ukraine’s recent raid campaign had caused a “certain fuel shortage” in the short term in many regions of Russia, adding that the government was looking for ways to resolve the problem.