Ukrainian Drones Attack Finishes Off Russia’s Largest Oil Refinery

The attacked oil refinery near Nizhny Novgorod processed 15 million tons of oil per year.

Thanks to today’s successful attack by Ukrainian drones, one of the most powerful oil refineries in the Russian Federation, LUKOIL-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, in the city of Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region, was disabled.

According to information in the Russian online public pages, the most important element of the plant was destroyed, which is one of the oil refining units, key in all technological processes, and the plant stopped working.

As Defence Express analysts note, this refinery is one of the most powerful in Russia. As of 2022, this enterprise processed 15 million tons of oil, which accounted for about 5% of the total volume of Russian refining as a whole.

In addition, this plant became one of the first victims of sanctions against the Russian Federation — on January 4, 2024, another catalytic cracking unit failed due to a breakdown of compression equipment. And there are only two of them at this enterprise.

— As the Russian Federation reported in January, it is impossible to quickly repair it, because for this it is necessary to order Western components, and this is not possible either. Thus, this attack may well completely “kill” this Russian oil refinery, analysts point out.

In addition, that night other Russian facilities were also attacked by drones; in particular, an oil depot in Orel was hit by a drone and a fire broke out.

In total, explosions were reported at night from the Kursk, Tula, Voronezh, Oryol and Belgorod regions. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported an attack by 25 drones.