Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia overnight into 31 July, lighting fires at a major refinery and a warehouse hub in Volgograd and reaching more than 1,100 km east into Tatarstan by morning, Russian officials and monitoring channels reported. The retailer and the local governor both acknowledged the blazes. The wave extended Ukraine's twin campaigns against Russian fuel and commercial logistics.

Volgograd: a refinery and a Wildberries hub ablaze

The Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ began reporting explosions in Volgograd around 02:30, then shared photos and videos of dense smoke. It identified two targets: a Wildberries logistics complex and Lukoil's Volgograd refinery, and by 03:46 counted at least two sites struck. The Russian news Telegram channel Astra reached the same conclusion through open-source analysis of eyewitness footage.

Volgograd Oblast Governor Andrei Bocharov confirmed the drone strikes. He said fires broke out overnight at a fuel-and-energy enterprise in the south of the city and at warehouses in the Dzerzhinsky district, and five people were allegedly hospitalized.

Wildberries confirmed a fire at its logistics center after the strike. The hub spans more than 48,000 m² and serves Volgograd, Astrakhan, and neighboring regions, and it was still burning hours later.

The refinery is Lukoil's Volgograd plant, the largest fuel producer in Russia's Southern Federal District, with a design capacity of about 15.7 million tons of crude a year. It makes diesel and aviation fuel that supply Russian forces in Ukraine's south, and it sits about 500 km from the front line. Ukraine had already struck it at the end of May, and it was ablaze again by morning.

Tatarstan: smoke over Zelenodolsk, explosions in Nizhnekamsk

By morning, residents near Kazan reported explosions across Tatarstan. Astra's analysis pointed to a second Wildberries complex in Zelenodolsk, with smoke seen over the building, and Exilenova+ placed the strike there too, though no official confirmation of a hit followed. One of the shared videos showed a near miss, with a drone striking the ground next to the warehouse. 

Zelenodolsk district head Mikhail Afanasyev claimed a drone was repelled with no destruction, and Wildberries said that the warehouse was operating normally. Drones had already targeted it on 23 July.

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In Nizhnekamsk, locals described over 30 explosions and a flare burning intensely at a refinery, though whether a strike caused it stayed unclear. Exilenova+ said a local refinery cut pressure amid the raid. The city's main oil-processing plants, TANECO and TAIF-NK, sit in one industrial zone. Mayor Radmir Belyaev claimed drones were downed with no damage. Airports in Kazan, Nizhnekamsk, and Bugulma temporarily halted flights.

A campaign against warehouses and refineries

The drive against Wildberries opened on 18 July and has hit at least 18 distribution centers in two weeks, knocking out more than 15% of the retailer's storage, one tally found. Ukraine has kept Wildberries under sanctions since 2021 and lists it as a retailer that also moves military gear.

The refinery strikes run in parallel and stretch back to last August. On 29 July, drones hit a Lukoil refinery in Perm, which halted about a third of its capacity per Reuters sources, and Rosneft's Ryazan plant. Of 26 refineries knocked out in recent months, Russia had returned only eight to full work by late July, the Financial Times reported.

Russia's Tyumen oil refinery has fully halted crude processing and fuel output since a late-July Ukrainian drone strike, two industry sources told Reuters on 28 July. The plant sits more than 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine, deep in western Siberia. How long the damaged gasoline production will take to repair remains unclear.

The plant stopped making fuel

RI-Invest, which owns the Tyumen refinery, shut down crude processing and all product output on 25 July, when the Ukrainian drones hit the facility, according to the two sources in a Reuters report carried by The Moscow Times. The drone strike that day damaged the plant's secondary units and set them on fire. 

The blaze hit a diesel hydrotreating unit rated at 2.6 million tons a year. It also struck the combined high-octane gasoline complex, which pairs a catalytic reformer with an isomerization unit. Neither source could estimate how long the gasoline repairs would run, according to Reuters.

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A plant already patching an older fire

The same diesel hydrotreating unit spent last month under repair after a 6 June fire from internal causes. The gasoline complex was built under a license from the US firm UOP and started operating in 2018. The refinery's full capacity reaches 9 million tons a year, the sources said. In 2024 it processed 5.7 million tons of crude, turning out 0.5 million tons of gasoline and 2.8 million tons of diesel.

Drones over Siberia, far from any front

On 25 July, Tyumen Oblast Governor Alexander Moor confirmed the drone attack on the region and reported no casualties. 

Ukrainian drones had already reached the same plant on 20 June. The lost output tightens a home fuel market that has run short since spring, as Kyiv escalated its campaign against oil-processing plants.

Tyumen Oblast is currently also bracing for major flooding as the Tura River rises.