Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained two men suspected of scouting targets for Russian strikes on Sloviansk and Dnipro, the agency reported on 14 October. Catching both early let it secure Ukrainian reserve command posts and the gas stations the alleged agents had been hunting, the agency added.
Sloviansk anchors the northern end of the Fortress Belt, the chain of fortified cities that has held Ukraine’s defense of Donetsk Oblast since 2014. Russia is pushing to seize them, and its aircraft bombed a residential area of Sloviansk on 11 October. Where Ukrainian convoys stop and troops gather is exactly what Russian handlers allegedly asked these suspects to supply.
The first suspect worked at a gas station complex in Sloviansk, Donetsk Oblast. Russian intelligence allegedly reached him through a former classmate who left for Russia after the full-scale invasion and now works for its special services, the SBU said. He then allegedly used his phone to secretly film Ukrainian army convoys at or near gas stations. He was allegedly supposed to send the photos and videos to Russia to help it prepare a targeted strike. He also allegedly drove his own car around other gas stations and bridges that the Defense Forces use for logistics.
The second suspect, a former Pokrovsk resident, moved to Dnipro in 2024 and settled in a dormitory. Russian intelligence noticed him through pro-Kremlin comments he posted in Telegram chats, investigators say. A female handler in Russia allegedly tasked him with guiding missile and drone attacks on places in the city where Ukrainian troops and equipment were concentrated. He allegedly scouted on foot or took public transport to reach outlying districts.
Officers seized computers and smartphones containing evidence of the men’s alleged work for Russia. Both are suspected of treason under martial law and of unauthorized dissemination of information on Ukrainian troop movements or deployment, under Articles 111(2) and 114-2(2) of the Criminal Code. They remain in custody without bail and face up to life imprisonment with confiscation of property. The SBU’s office for Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts ran the operation under the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office.
A drone strike on 10 October put more than half of the large fuel tanks out of action at an oil-loading terminal in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, Russian news Telegram channel Astra found. The terminal loads fuel onto river and sea tankers for export, and it burned for two days while a local channel wrote that reeds might be on fire. Neither Kyiv nor Moscow has officially acknowledged the hit. It came hours after US President Donald Trump announced a diesel deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Russia has spent the autumn hammering Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter. Ukraine’s long-range drones keep hitting the refineries, depots, and terminals that fuel Russia’s army and earn it export revenue. Every burned tank turns that revenue into repair bills, while Moscow is already subsidizing its own fuel pumps. A refinery-only truce of the kind the White House described a day after the strike would shield the Russian plants that feed terminals like this one.
Astra’s analysts concluded from eyewitness footage that at least seven of the terminal’s 12 large tanks had been knocked out. Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova+ counted seven burned-out tanks and one more scorched by the fire.
The fire was still burning in the early hours of 12 October. Local channel Rostov Glavny posted video of the burning tank farm, passing on rumors that reeds were on fire and noting the city’s second day under smoke, The Moscow Times reported. Footage filmed in the daytime on 12 October showed no more open flames, only gray smoke, according to Astra.
The site is the oil-loading terminal of the Novoshakhtinsk Oil Products Plant, formerly known as Yug Rusi, in Rostov-on-Don’s Zheleznodorozhny District. It receives, stores, and transships fuel onto river and sea tankers, including for export, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ said.
The terminal also supplies fuel to the Russian army and earns Moscow hard currency, ZN reported. The Moscow Times put its loading capacity at 3.5 million tons a year and its tank farm at about 60,000 cubic meters, roughly 16 million gallons.
The refinery itself stands in the town of Novoshakhtinsk near the border with Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast. The terminal sits on the Don River with access to the Sea of Azov, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi noted. Ukraine hit the refinery in June, and Ukraine’s General Staff reported striking the Yug Rusi terminal on 9 July, placing it in Bataysk.
Exilenova+ posted images of the burning terminal in the early hours of 10 October. It presented them as the site after Trump’s phone call with Putin. The channel later shared NASA satellite fire data showing the blaze.
Rostov Oblast Governor Yuri Slyusar claimed the attack injured six people. Slyusar further stated air defenses downed more than 100 drones over the region. Radio Liberty’s Russian Service noted that neither side had officially confirmed the hit on the terminal.
The strike came hours after Trump announced on 9 October that Russia had agreed to supply diesel to US and global markets. The US Treasury then cleared the trade with a sanctions license.
On 11 October, Trump declared an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Under it, he expects Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries, a White House official told Axios.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that evening that Ukraine’s armed forces had received all relevant orders. Neither Ukrainian monitoring channels nor Russian officials have reported a new strike on a Russian oil facility since. On 13 October, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to guarantee an energy ceasefire if Russia took matching steps.
Ukraine has intensified its campaign against Russia’s oil industry with another drone strike on the Samara linear production and dispatch station, a major facility in the pipeline network operated by state-controlled Transneft. The latest attack, during the night of 9–10 October, followed earlier strikes on 2 and 7 October, which Ukrainian military authorities say caused extensive damage to storage tanks and associated infrastructure.
The significance of Samara extends well beyond the destruction of stored oil. Situated near the settlement of Prosvet in Russia’s Samara region, the installation is a junction where crude oil arriving from Western Siberia, Tatarstan and the Volga-Urals producing regions is received, stored, blended and redistributed. Its role makes it an important link between Russian oil production, domestic refining and export markets.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff’s operational report, Samara is responsible for blending crude with different sulphur contents to produce Urals, Russia’s principal export grade. Ukraine’s military says the facility also contributes to supplying the Russian armed forces.
Unlike an oil refinery, where crude is processed into petrol, diesel and other fuels, the Samara installation performs a function earlier in the supply chain. It is one of the points where different grades of Russian crude are brought together to produce a commercially standardised export mixture.
Western Siberian crude generally has different characteristics from oil extracted in the Volga-Urals basin, including variations in sulphur content and density. Blending these streams is essential to maintaining the specifications of Urals crude, which is supplied to refineries and sold on international markets.
Samara’s importance also reflects the sheer scale of the infrastructure concentrated at the site. Ukrainian Special Operations Forces describe a facility where four major oil pipelines converge, supported by 71 storage tanks with a combined capacity exceeding 1.6 million cubic metres.
The site’s central role is not simply a Ukrainian assessment. Transneft-Privoĺga’s management previously described the Samara installation as having Europe’s largest oil storage tank farm and identified its blending station and associated pumping installations as part of a major modernisation programme.
Approximately 140 million tonnes of oil passes through the Samara complex annually. That figure would make the installation an important concentration point within the wider Russian pipeline system.
The consequences of sustained disruption could therefore extend beyond the immediate loss of storage capacity. Damage to blending operations, connecting pipelines or loading equipment could interfere with the movement of crude towards refineries and export routes. The precise effect would depend on the functioning of alternative facilities, available spare capacity and the speed of repairs.
The first strike, on 2 October, reportedly damaged 11 storage tanks with capacities of 20,000 cubic metres each, three larger tanks of 50,000 cubic metres, sections of pipeline and an automated loading station. The Security Service of Ukraine confirmed that its personnel had participated in the operation alongside other branches of the armed forces.
A further strike on 7 October destroyed four large storage tanks and caused a substantial fire, according to Ukraine’s General Staff. Ukrainian Special Operations Forces subsequently confirmed another attack on 10 October, although the damage from that operation remains under assessment. The reported destruction and damage have not been independently verified in full.
The repeated attacks indicate an effort to produce cumulative disruption rather than rely on a single operation to disable an extensive industrial complex.
This approach is consistent with Ukraine’s broader campaign against Russia’s refining industry. As EU Today examined in August, repeated strikes on processing facilities can create difficulties that extend beyond the immediate damage, particularly when specialist equipment requires lengthy repairs.
The campaign against Samara represents a significant extension of that strategy. Refineries remain important targets because they produce the fuels required by Russia’s armed forces and domestic economy. Transport and blending facilities, however, determine whether crude reaches those refineries in the required quantities and specifications.
Continuous attacks are essential because much of the damage inflicted by drones is repairable. Individual installations may return to service within days or weeks, meaning the cumulative effect depends heavily on whether further disruption occurs before repairs and production have fully resumed.
Russia’s refining industry remains heavily dependent on specialist equipment and technologies historically supplied by Western manufacturers. Sanctions have restricted access to replacement components, while domestically manufactured equipment and Chinese alternatives are not always technically compatible with existing installations. These constraints complicate repairs, prolong shutdowns and limit Russia’s ability to restore damaged refining capacity.
Samara presents a somewhat different vulnerability. Its importance rests on the concentration of pipeline connections, storage and blending operations at one location. A sustained interruption could affect several parts of the oil supply chain simultaneously, although the available evidence does not yet establish that the wider network has suffered a prolonged shutdown.
Ukraine has already demonstrated its willingness to strike other logistical installations. A recent attack on the Volodarskaya petroleum-products station near Moscow targeted another important part of Russia’s fuel distribution system.
Oil remains central to Russia’s export earnings and federal finances, while the availability of refined petroleum products influences military logistics, transport and industrial activity.
The immediate economic significance of the Samara attacks will depend on how much operational capacity has been lost, whether crude can be redirected through alternative infrastructure and how quickly Transneft can restore the damaged facilities.
There is an important distinction between destroying storage tanks and preventing oil from moving through a network. The former reduces available capacity; the latter can impose broader restrictions on production, refining and exports. Establishing the extent to which the latest strikes have achieved either effect will require further operational evidence.
Nevertheless, the decision to return repeatedly to Samara illustrates a development in Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s energy sector. Rather than concentrating exclusively on the refineries that convert crude into fuel, Kyiv is also attacking infrastructure that connects oil production to its commercial and military end users.
For Moscow, the vulnerability of Samara is particularly consequential because the installation occupies a central position in the movement and preparation of Urals crude. Any sustained loss of its blending, storage or distribution functions would introduce additional pressure into an oil system already facing repeated attacks on its refineries and export infrastructure.
The latest operation therefore raises a question extending beyond the damage to one industrial site: whether Russia can maintain reliable oil flows when several interconnected stages of its energy supply chain are subjected to recurring disruption.
Russia's seaborne exports of refined oil products rose to a three-month high in September, but the growth came from cheaper fuel oil and naphtha as diesel shipments fell to their lowest in more than a decade, Bloomberg reported, citing Vortexa data. Russia kept diesel at home after Ukrainian refinery strikes and paid oil companies to supply its pumps, while high crude prices lifted its crude export earnings.
During the ongoing deep-strike campaign, Ukraine's long-range drones have knocked out more than half of Russia's oil refining capacity, Kyiv says, and Russia's budget oil revenues are falling even as it raises war spending. High global crude prices are softening that blow.
Total seaborne product exports reached about 1.17 million barrels a day in September. Fuel oil shipments rose 6% to about 613,000 barrels a day, the highest since April. Naphtha, a feedstock for petrochemicals, jumped 35% to 363,000 barrels a day. Exports of refinery feedstocks, including vacuum gasoil, rose to about 32,000 barrels a day, according to Bloomberg.
The trade has moved north. Almost 80% of fuel oil cargoes left from Baltic ports, and naphtha loadings there rose almost 50% as Ukrainian attacks disrupted Black Sea infrastructure. In September, Ukraine reported hitting an oil terminal in Novorossiysk, Russia's main Black Sea oil port—one in a string of attacks on Russia's Black Sea ports and oil sites.
Diesel and gasoil exports fell 28% to 144,000 barrels a day, the lowest monthly volume in Vortexa data going back more than a decade. Russia has restricted diesel exports to protect domestic supply after Ukrainian attacks on its refineries. Drones kept hitting them into October, from a Lukoil refinery in Volgograd to Gazprom's Salavat complex in Bashkortostan.
In September, Russia paid oil companies the biggest subsidy in more than four years to keep road fuel on the domestic market. It also imported about 350,000 tonnes of motor fuel by sea, mostly gasoline from India, Morocco, and Türkiye, Reuters calculations showed. Officials are considering letting some producers resume diesel exports in October to avoid overstocking, according to Interfax.
The diesel squeeze has reached the White House. US President Donald Trump stated on 30 September that diesel was hurt "not by the Middle East, but by what's going on in Russia, because those diesel refineries are being knocked out at a pretty alarming rate."
Russia's crude exports reached about 3.99 million barrels a day in the week to 27 September, and the estimated value of its seaborne crude shipments neared its highest since the full-scale invasion began, Bloomberg reported. Brent crude traded at about $102.60 a barrel on 9 October, according to Trading Economics data.
Drones struck a plant making fuel components for Russia's Kh-101 cruise missiles and a second Yandex data center overnight on 9 October, Russian officials and monitoring channels reported. The same night, fires were reported at a refinery in Russia's far north and an oil depot near Belgorod. Russia claimed it downed more than 500 drones, and Ukraine has not claimed any of the strikes.
Ukraine has spent months hitting refineries and arms suppliers deep inside Russia. Russia, meanwhile, keeps firing Kh-101 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, including the one that killed 22 people in Pryluky on 7 October.
The Redkino Experimental Plant in Tver Oblast came under attack overnight, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. It said the plant makes components of Decilin-M, a fuel for Kh-55 and Kh-101 cruise missiles, as well as additives for diesel and aviation kerosene.
Tver Oblast Governor Vitaly Korolev claimed a plant in Redkino caught fire as a drone attack was being repelled. He did not name the plant. No workers were hurt, he said.
The plant also makes ferrocene derivatives, which serve as burn catalysts in solid-fuel rocket motors, Militarnyi reported. The UK sanctioned it in September 2025. Drones attacked it in September 2023 and twice in one night in June 2024, the outlet said.
In February, drones of the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) Alpha unit struck the plant, sparking a large fire, SBU sources told Kyiv Post. The Kh-101 is the missile Russia used against Pryluky on 7 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Part of Yandex's data center in Kaluga was damaged in the drone attack, and several modules were completely knocked out, the company's press service told Interfax, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. Some Yandex services may run with interruptions, no one was hurt, and the company is still assessing the damage, Yandex said.
Kaluga Oblast Governor Vladislav Shapsha claimed nine people were injured in the overnight attack on the region. A day earlier, a drone attack forced Yandex to fully shut its data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast.
Locals reported an attack on the Ukhta refinery in the Komi Republic, followed by a fire, Exilenova+ said. The Lukoil-owned plant can process about 4.2 million metric tons of oil a year, making gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and vacuum gasoil. The extent of the damage is unclear.
An oil depot north of Belgorod was also burning after the night's attack, the channel posted. Belgorod's regional headquarters claimed two people were killed and four injured, including a child, in the Belgorod district.
A large fire also broke out in Pushkino near Moscow, likely at a truck parking lot, Astra reported. The cause is unknown.
Repeated strikes on Redkino target a specialty fuel that Russia's cruise missiles depend on, while two Yandex data centers hit in two nights bring the war to services ordinary Russians use every day.
Russia has shown a drone interceptor built on the Alazan, a civilian anti-hail rocket, Militarnyi reported. The sample went on display at a weapons exhibition that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin toured at the Chebarkul training range in the Urals on 2 October.
Ukraine now sends drones at Russia by the hundreds, by Moscow's own count. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses intercepted nearly 900 overnight into 6 October. Russia's missile-based air defense was built to repel aircraft raids and a few cruise missiles, not swarms of low-flying drones.
In May, Ukrainian intelligence said Russia was adding four regiments, 24 battalions, and 162 batteries to counter Ukrainian strike drones. The converted Alazan, which Militarnyi calls an anti-drone system, is one more piece of that search. Meanwhile, the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Brovdi, said his forces struck 300 Russian air-defense assets between January and 19 September.
Based on the size of the sample on display, the interceptor builds on the Alazan-2M or Alazan-6 series, Militarnyi assessed. The outlet put the stated cost at up to $12,000 per unit but did not say who named the figure. In civilian service, the rocket flies about 10 km, climbs up to 8 km, and carries about 0.5 kg of reagent. For air defense, the developers plan to replace that reagent with a fragmentation warhead.
Militarnyi's analysis of the published photos describes the front end as a steering assembly: four cruciform deflector fins, probably paired with a seeker or a fuze. At the rear sit folding stabilizers and the open nozzle of a solid-fuel motor, held in a metal cradle.
The Kremlin's account of the visit lists more than 300 weapons on display, including interceptor drones, but does not mention the rocket. Propaganda channel Russia 1 aired the interceptor in its report from the visit, and the Kremlin pool of state news agency RIA posted photos.
A major fire was reported at the Volodarskaya linear production and dispatch station in Moscow region early on Tuesday, bringing Ukraine’s campaign against Russian fuel infrastructure to another important point in the capital’s supply network.
Footage published from the area around Konstantinovo showed a substantial blaze at the facility, with reports from local residents that storage tanks were burning. The material identified the site as the Volodarskaya station, operated by Transneft-Upper Volga and connected to the petroleum-products network serving the Moscow region.
The extent of the damage was not immediately clear. There had been no detailed assessment from Transneft by Tuesday morning establishing whether pumping equipment, pipelines or only storage facilities had been affected. This distinction will determine whether the attack produces a temporary disruption or a more significant problem for Moscow’s fuel distribution system.
The strike formed part of a large overnight drone attack on Moscow and surrounding districts. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported repeated interceptions of drones approaching the capital, while air-defence activity continued across Moscow region. Russian aviation authorities temporarily restricted operations at Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky airports for flight-safety reasons.
There is no evidence at this stage that the airport restrictions resulted from fuel shortages. They were imposed during the drone attack itself. The longer-term significance of Volodarskaya lies instead in the station’s role within the pipeline and storage infrastructure serving the Russian capital.
Volodarskaya is connected to Moscow’s ring petroleum-products pipeline, through which petrol, diesel and aviation kerosene can be moved between refineries, storage facilities and major consumers.
Its importance is documented by Transneft itself. In 2024, the company said it had returned a 32-kilometre petroleum-products pipeline between the Moscow refinery and Volodarskaya to operation as part of a project to increase fuel deliveries across Moscow region.
According to the company’s figures, the project allowed aviation-fuel deliveries to Moscow’s airports to rise almost twofold, to as much as three million tonnes a year. Potential diesel deliveries to Moscow region consumers increased to 2.8 million tonnes annually, while petrol volumes reached 1.6 million tonnes. Transneft specifically identified Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo as airports supplied through the expanded system.
Transneft has also expanded storage at Volodarskaya. The company previously said it had commissioned additional petroleum-product tanks at the station to support fuel supplies to Moscow and aviation-fuel transportation to the capital’s airports.
Those figures do not mean that every litre of fuel consumed by Moscow depends on Volodarskaya. Russia can move petroleum products by rail and road, and the Moscow region has other storage and distribution facilities. But replacing pipeline volumes on the scale handled by the Moscow system would place additional demands on those alternatives, particularly if disruption were prolonged.
The attack also follows repeated Ukrainian strikes against refining infrastructure supplying European Russia. On 20 September, EU Today reported that a mass drone attack had hit the Moscow Oil Refinery at Kapotnya, one of the main fuel-processing plants serving the capital. The strike reportedly affected its ELOU-AVT-6 primary processing unit, increasing pressure on a refinery that had already been targeted earlier in the year.
The broader campaign has moved beyond individual refineries. Ukraine has increasingly targeted different stages of Russia’s energy system, including storage depots, pumping infrastructure, ports and export terminals. Earlier attacks on the Omsk refinery and Baltic export infrastructure illustrated Kyiv’s effort to put pressure on both domestic fuel processing and the logistics through which Russian oil reaches international markets.
That approach is intended to force Russia to repair several parts of the system simultaneously rather than simply compensate for the temporary loss of production at one refinery. EU Today has previously examined how sustained strikes can put physical pressure on Russia’s oil economy where sanctions alone have limits.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 3 October that Ukraine intended to intensify attacks on Russian oil refineries in response to Moscow’s continuing strikes against Ukrainian cities, while maintaining that Ukrainian operations would not deliberately target civilians.
Volodarskaya adds another element to that campaign. A refinery converts crude oil into usable fuels; a pumping and storage station determines how those products reach consumers. Damaging one without the other may create disruption that can be bypassed. Sustained damage to both processing and distribution infrastructure is more difficult to compensate for.
Much therefore depends on what happened inside Volodarskaya overnight. If the damage is confined to several storage tanks, the Moscow fuel network may be able to absorb the loss. Damage to pumping installations or pipeline connections would have wider consequences, particularly if the facility is attacked repeatedly.
The strike nevertheless demonstrates that a fuel installation closely connected to Moscow’s aviation and transport system can be reached despite the dense air-defence network surrounding the capital. The scale of its effect will become clearer once satellite imagery and operational information show which parts of the Volodarskaya complex were actually damaged.
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