Ukrainian Drones Hit Yaroslavl Refinery, Sparking Fire and Injuring Two Workers

A large overnight drone attack damaged one of Russia’s biggest oil refineries in the city of Yaroslavl and started a fire at the site, the regional governor said on Tuesday, in the latest strike on Russian energy infrastructure. Two refinery employees were injured, and emergency crews worked through the morning to bring the blaze under control.

FAKTA: What happened

• The strike hit the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Yaroslavl, about 250 kilometres north-east of Moscow, overnight into Tuesday, 3 November.
• Yaroslavl governor Mikhail Yevrayev said air defence and electronic warfare units repelled 124 drones aimed at the refinery, but its infrastructure was damaged and a fire broke out.
• Two employees suffered shrapnel wounds and were taken to hospital, the governor said.
• Russia’s defence ministry said 856 Ukrainian drones were downed across the country overnight.
• YANOS is one of Russia’s five largest refineries, processing around 15 million tonnes of crude oil a year into petrol, diesel and fuel oil.
• The full extent of the damage had not been detailed, and Ukraine had not immediately commented on the strike.

Fire at a plant deep inside Russia

According to the governor, the attack was repelled overnight, but the resulting fire still caused damage at the site. Emergency services worked to extinguish the flames and assess what had been hit. Unverified footage shared on social media showed large flames rising above the industrial site in the dark.

Debris also damaged apartment blocks, private homes and cars in the area, and the road out of Yaroslavl towards Moscow was temporarily closed, according to local reports. The scale of the raid — 124 drones directed at a single facility — underlines how deeply the drone campaign now reaches into Russian territory.

A repeated target in the energy campaign

The Yaroslavl plant has been struck repeatedly during the war. In September, a drone strike damaged a processing unit reported to account for around 40 percent of the facility’s capacity, forcing it to suspend operations for a time. Ukraine has systematically targeted Russian refineries to cut the fuel supplies and export revenue supporting Moscow’s military campaign, while Russia has responded with strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

The attack also follows reports last week that Ukraine had paused refinery strikes after pressure from the United States, only for Russian officials to then report fresh attacks on energy facilities in the Samara region and damage to a site in Nizhny Novgorod. The renewed strikes suggest the pause, if it existed, did not hold.

What remains unclear

Officials have not yet said which units at Yaroslavl were hit, or whether any refining capacity has been lost. Previous fires at the plant were put out within hours, and without an operator statement or production data, the effect on fuel supplies cannot yet be judged. What is confirmed is the fire, the two injured workers and the scale of the barrage reported by the governor. For more international news, visit Watan News International.