Drones struck Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery overnight on 5 November, and the plant caught fire, Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ reported. The Rosneft-owned plant is one of Russia’s largest refineries.

Russia’s war runs on fuel and oil money, and Ukraine’s drones go for refinery parts that sanctions make hard to repair. The Ryazan refinery supplies fuel to Moscow and central Russia, and the last raid already cost it capacity. After the 15 October strike, one of its primary crude units shut down, two industry sources told Reuters. No one has yet reported which parts of the plant this fire hit. Ryazan is the fifth Russian refinery struck since 30 October, when strikes resumed after about two weeks without a reported refinery fire.

Fire at the refinery

Exilenova+ posted video of strike drones breaking through to the refinery’s industrial zone. About half an hour later, the channel wrote that the refinery had been attacked and was burning. Russian Telegram channel Astra said its OSINT analyst confirmed that the refinery itself was on fire.

Ryazan Oblast Governor Pavel Malkov claimed falling drone debris caused damage. Separately, he claimed fires broke out at industrial sites in Ryazan and damaged power lines cut electricity in part of the city. He also said an outbuilding caught fire in Rybnovsky district, private houses were damaged in Ryazan district, and a city school’s windows were blown out. One person was injured, he claimed. In a later update, Malkov claimed more than 200 drones attacked the region, power was restored, and the fires were out or contained.

He did not name the refinery. Three weeks earlier, after the 15 October raid, Malkov named the plant when he reported a fire there.

Astra also reported that a large Wildberries online-retail warehouse in Ryazan was presumably burning. Its analyst based that on a reader’s photo and had not verified it.

The refinery can process more than 17 million tons of crude a year, Exilenova+ noted. It makes gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil, and bitumen. In its post on the fire, Astra also reported that the plant supplies Russia’s army, pointing to a 2014 Defense Ministry fuel batch and the TS-1 jet fuel it produces.

Four other refineries since 30 October

Drones hit Novokuibyshevsk in Samara Oblast on 30 October, the Bashneft-Novoil refinery in Ufa, Bashkortostan, on 31 October, and Lukoil’s Kstovo plant in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast on 1 November. Together, those three plants processed about 24 million tons of crude a year. That equals roughly 10% of Russia’s refining in 2024 and over 10% of its diesel. Overnight on 3 November, drones also struck the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl Oblast Governor Mikhail Yevrayev said the attack damaged its infrastructure and wounded two workers. Crews were putting out a fire there, he added.

In Ufa, Astra’s analyst identified the burning plant as Bashneft-Novoil. Exilenova+ wrote that probably two Ufa refineries were attacked. Counting both, it calls Ryazan the sixth refinery hit in a week.

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Drones hit Russia’s Samara oil hub that blends Urals export crude—first strike there since 11 October

On 15 October, US President Donald Trump called Ukraine’s renewed refinery strikes “a disgrace.” In late October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine had paused them under US pressure until after the 3 November US midterms. The Novokuibyshevsk strike came hours later, and drones have hit four more refineries since.

Russian tech giant Yandex's data center in Sasovo burned out from the inside, a Ukrainian OSINT analyst wrote on 22 October. On cloud-free satellite images, he saw almost no significant holes in its roof. Ukrainian drones hit the site overnight on 8 October.

Sasovo was the first strike on a data center in Russia. It came two weeks after Russia destroyed data centers in Kyiv. Drones then hit Yandex sites in Vladimir and Kaluga, a Sber data center, and a VK data center near St. Petersburg, which VK acknowledged. In occupied Donbas, monitoring channels reported hits on buildings housing telecom operators.

What the analyst sees

The analyst, who goes by Harbuz, runs the Ukrainian OSINT channel Dnipro Osint. His roof reading comes from the images. His interior claim comes from what he called available information: he wrote that a fire broke out inside and put part of the equipment out of action.

In an earlier post, Harbuz wrote that a third of the data center had burned out. In the new one, he writes that the building burned out from the inside. He does not say whether he revised the earlier figure.

Russian outlet Agentstvo studied Airbus images from 12 October. It found damage on about a third of the building. Unlike Harbuz, though, Agentstvo described a blackened western roof with damage resembling holes.

What Yandex says

On 8 October, Yandex stated that the attack caused a fire and forced it to suspend operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Reuters reported. Yandex Cloud and the Disk and Documents services that run on it ran with major disruptions that morning, Russian outlet The Bell reported.

Later that day, the company stated: "The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed. For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is possible to restore the data centre equipment in Sasovo." Two of Yandex's three supercomputers, used to develop its AI model, are housed there.

The same day, journalists asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy whether Ukraine was targeting Russian data centers. He did not refer specifically to the Yandex strike, Reuters noted, but said: "We always respond in mirror-like fashion."

A drone attack overnight on 8 October caused a fire that hit part of Yandex's data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, about 580 km from Ukraine, and the site is fully stopped, the Russian tech company told Russian media. The data center sits on the grounds of Sasta, a sanctioned machine-tool plant, Russian outlet Astra said, citing Wikimapia data. Astra's OSINT analyst found from eyewitness footage that the fire hit the plant.

Since late September, Russia has been striking data centers in Kyiv that keep Ukraine's internet and online services running. Now a drone attack has stopped one of the data centers that Russia's largest tech company relies on.

Yandex counts the damage

Yandex warned that some services may be unavailable, while its core services kept running and no one was hurt. Ryazan Oblast Governor Pavel Malkov claimed two drones were downed, a roof caught fire at an enterprise in the Sasovo district, and windows were blown out in several homes.

The power failure took down a wide range of Yandex Cloud infrastructure, including computing capacity, networks, data storage, databases, Kubernetes, cloud services, AI, and security and monitoring systems, Ukrainian outlet ZN.ua reported, citing Exilenova+.

Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported that the plant was hit, without naming an attacker. The channel said Sasta, which claims a place on Russia's register of defense-industry companies, makes computer-controlled machine tools, including five-axis machining centers, and previously supplied the Tactical Missiles Corporation (KTRV) and Roscosmos. The plant's value to the arms industry lies in machines that cut precision parts, not in finished weapons, the channel said.

Citing Exilenova+, Militarnyi reported that Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the plant. It also linked Sasta to Iskander missile supply chains. No source has said whether the plant or the data center was the target, and no Ukrainian official has claimed the Sasovo strike. Sasta has been under US sanctions since November 2023, UK sanctions since February 2024, and Ukrainian sanctions since April 2025, a sanctions database shows.

Salavat: Kyiv reports a hit

Ukrainian forces hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat complex in Bashkortostan, about 1,380 km from the front line, causing a fire, Ukraine's General Staff said. It said the complex processes up to 10 million metric tons of hydrocarbons a year and serves Russia's armed forces. Its key unit, the ELOU-AVT-6 primary oil refining unit launched in 2012, can process 6 million metric tons a year, Militarnyi reported. Astra's analyst placed the fire a few kilometers outside Salavat, possibly near the refinery.

Salavat Mayor Marat Zagidullin claimed that debris from several drones fell in the industrial zone that morning and started a fire.

"The enterprise continues to work," he said.

Astra noted earlier hits on the complex on 24 September 2025, on 14 July 2026, when refining fully stopped, and on 13 August 2026.

Russia's strikes on Ukraine's data centers

Russia has repeatedly hit data centers in Kyiv since 23 September. Strikes hit the COSMONOVA data center twice, the second time knocking it out, and the Parkovyi data center stopped working completely on 1 October after a series of strikes. In early October, Russia destroyed the dline.ua data center in Kyiv.