A large fire and thick black smoke rose over a Rosneft refinery in Russia’s central Saratov region after Ukrainian drones hit it in overnight attacks on May 31. It was the second strike on the plant since March.
No casualties appeared to result. Ukraine’s military said the Saratov refinery was among several targets across Russia. Governor Roman Busargin said “civilian infrastructure” was hit but did not say what.
The refinery sits hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border. It belongs to the state-owned oil company, and the raid is the latest in a campaign of deep strikes meant to hurt Russia’s oil industry.
A stepped-up campaign
Since the start of the year, Ukraine has sharply increased drone attacks on Russian oil and gas facilities. The aim looks to be a cut in Russia’s ability to export hydrocarbons and earn the revenue that pays for its war. Moscow has gained from a spike in global energy prices caused by the US-and-Israeli war against Iran.
The Ukrainian strikes, which have also gone after pipelines and storage sites, have forced virtually all major refineries in central Russia to halt or cut production. Reuters estimates that this has dramatically reduced Russian oil output.
In Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia forcibly annexed from Ukraine in 2014, local authorities announced gasoline rationing. Drivers face daily limits and may not fill portable containers. Regional head Sergei Aksyonov said public transportation would come first.
Zaporizhzhya drone
A separate incident on May 30 involved a drone that detonated near the turbine building of one of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, Ukraine’s largest. Aleksei Likhachev, head of Russia’s state atomic company Rosatom, said the drone was Ukrainian. Ukraine’s military rejected that and accused Russia of trying to deflect from its own war crimes and losses.
The plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, has been in cold shutdown since 2022, when Russian forces occupied part of the region and the station. Kyiv has accused Moscow several times of sabotaging it to frame Ukraine. After the latest incident, a team of specialists from the International Atomic Energy Agency inspected the site and found no elevated levels of radiation.
