Russia Confirms Heavy Damage at a Kstovo Industrial Plant After a Mass Drone Attack, and Ukrainian Reports Point to a Major Oil Refinery

Russia said on Sunday that a mass drone attack that ran overnight into the morning badly damaged an industrial plant in the Kstovo district of the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, and that more than 100 drones were destroyed over the region. Ukrainian media and monitoring channels said the plant was the NORSI oil refinery in Kstovo, one of the largest refineries in Russia, and published footage they said showed a fire at the site.

What the governor confirmed

Gleb Nikitin, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, wrote on Telegram that a massive drone attack took place overnight and this morning. He said more than 100 drones were destroyed, an industrial plant in the Kstovo district sustained significant damage, and early information pointed to no casualties. He said a damage assessment was under way and emergency services were working at the site.

Nikitin did not name the plant or say what it produces. Euronews reported that he also warned residents that restoration work could bring temporary power cuts, along with reduced hot water and heating in parts of the utility networks that serve homes.

The refinery identified in Ukrainian reports

The Kyiv Independent reported early on Sunday that a fire had broken out at the NORSI refinery, also known as the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez plant, after a reported drone strike. It cited the Ukrainian monitoring channels Exilenova+ and Supernova+, which published reports and footage of the attack, and said at that stage that the reports could not be verified on its own. The governor's later statement confirmed heavy damage at an industrial plant in the same district, without naming it.

NORSI is the fourth-largest oil refinery in Russia and the country's second-largest producer of gasoline, processing about 15 to 17 million metric tons of crude oil a year, according to the Kyiv Independent. The plant makes diesel and aviation fuel, along with bitumen. Kstovo sits about 800 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, deep inside Russia.

A plant that has been hit before

This would not be the first strike on the refinery. A confirmed attack on August 26 caused a large fire, and the plant suspended operations because of the damage, the Kyiv Independent reported.

A renewed strike campaign

The Kstovo attack lands in a week when Ukraine has stepped up strikes on Russian oil sites again after a short pause. Moscow said on Friday that Ukraine had resumed attacks on Russian refineries, and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the renewed strikes had hit three oil refineries and one gas-chemical complex. Euronews reported that a major fire broke out at another refinery in the Samara region earlier this week after a drone attack, with columns of black smoke over the site.

Kyiv has hit Russian oil and gas sites repeatedly during the war, presenting the strikes as a reply to Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy systems since Moscow launched its full invasion in February 2022. By Sunday morning, no detailed official damage assessment for the Kstovo plant had been published, and it was not clear whether refining there had stopped.