Two people died in Russia’s southern Samara region on Friday while responding to fires at industrial sites hit by Ukrainian drones overnight, local authorities said. In the western Bryansk region, a separate airstrike killed a 19-year-old.
Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev blamed “the despicable enemy in Kyiv” for what he called a record number of drones. He wrote on VKontakte that emergency crews were dealing with damage from the strikes, and he did not say which sites were hit. Videos on social media showed large plumes of black smoke rising from several buildings.
The exiled outlet Astra used those videos to identify the target in Samara as the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, which is owned by Rosneft and which Ukraine has attacked repeatedly in recent years.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak confirmed that the drones went after three oil refineries and one gas chemical complex overnight. At least one suffered what he called “minor damage.”
A ceasefire that did not hold
The attacks followed an “energy ceasefire” that U.S. President Donald Trump announced earlier in the month. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv said beforehand that it had agreed to one. The pause fell apart almost at once, as the Russian army kept hitting Ukraine’s power grid.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Ukraine’s military had briefly stopped striking Russian refineries under pressure from the United States, where high domestic fuel costs weigh heavily with voters ahead of next week’s midterm elections. President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly told journalists that “our guys tried to be a little more careful during these days.” He added that soldiers had not been told outright to avoid refineries.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it intercepted 1,043 Ukrainian drones across Russia and annexed Crimea between Thursday night and Friday morning.
