“The Omsk Refinery welcomes the new FP1!” Denis Shtilyerman, co-owner and chief designer of the drone maker Fire Point, wrote on X after Ukraine said its drones had hit Russia’s largest oil refinery, deep in western Siberia.
The Ukrainian military announced the strike on Monday, 6 July. Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said the target sits nearly 2,500 km (1550 miles) from the border, which makes it one of the deepest attacks on Russian territory since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. NASA satellites picked up several heat plumes over the site that evening, pointing to intense fires.
What the refinery does
The Ukraine General Staff laid out why it mattered. In its statement, the plant was “the last of the 11 largest gasoline producers in the Russian Federation that Ukrainian soldiers have struck.” It called Omsk the most powerful refining enterprise in the country, at over 21 million tons per year. The refining depth, it added, is about 99 percent.
The product list is long: the high-octane gasolines AI-92, AI-95 and G-Drive 100, Euro-5 diesel, aviation kerosene, benzene, paraxylene, orthoxylene, lubricants and raw material for carbon black. According to the author of the National Security Journal analysis, Reuben F. Johnson, the volume equals 460,000 barrels of oil a day last year, enough to supply every Russian military unit working on occupied Ukrainian land. He wrote that Omsk matters to some of Moscow’s higher-priority military formations as well as to the wider economy.
Johnson said retired US intelligence officials and Ukrainian defense firms had brought up Omsk again and again over two months, often calling it the “Holy Grail” of Russian oil targets. One longtime intelligence official told him: “I keep watching Omsk and thinking that once they hit this facility that it will be one of those red-letter days of this war.”
A modified drone
Johnson wrote that the attack was probably carried out with a newly modified Fire Point FP-1, which has figured in many recent high-profile strikes. Shtilyerman described the changes. The long-range variant now has a trapezoidal wing with a straight leading edge and a trailing edge that tapers toward the tip. At cruising speed that shape creates less drag and spreads lift evenly across the surface, which cuts fuel use and stretches range.
The wing also works as a fuel tank. That frees more room inside the fuselage for the explosive payload, and the wing space is big enough to carry extra fuel, extra payload, or both.
Other targets that day
Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces hit other oil industry targets at the same time, including two Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Sea of Azov. Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi said the ships carried a combined 7,000 metric tons of fuel bound for occupied Crimea, close to 200 rail tank cars’ worth.
SBU chief Yevhenii Khmara, announcing the Omsk attack and the other strikes, said: “We are doing everything to ensure that Russia pays every day for its crimes. While the enemy shells peaceful Ukrainian cities, its military and fuel infrastructure will continue to suffer significant losses.”
