Fire reported at Kstovo oil refinery after drone attack on Nizhny Novgorod region

Social media accounts have reported a fire at an oil refinery in Kstovo, in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region, following what they described as a Ukrainian drone attack ¹³. One account, @TheMilitaryShow, said Russian officials had reported a large drone attack on the region and that the Kstovo refinery was reportedly hit ¹. The reports have not been independently verified, and their exact timing is unclear.

A post on the r/UkraineWarVideoReport forum described burning in Kstovo ². The @htTweets account said a fire had broken out at the town's oil refinery after a reported Ukrainian drone attack ³. None of the posts gave casualty figures or detailed the scale of the damage, and none quoted a named Russian official.

Earlier reports described a large drone attack on the Kstovo district overnight and on the morning of 1 November. Interfax quoted Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin as saying that more than 100 drones had been destroyed and that an industrial enterprise in the Kstovo district had sustained significant damage. He did not name the refinery, and he said preliminary data showed no casualties. The Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported a large fire near the refinery's AVT-5 and AVT-6 processing units, and the Ukrainian defence company Fire Point said it had confirmed damage and a fire at the plant. It is not clear whether the latest posts refer to that attack or to a separate, later one.

The Kstovo plant, Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, also known as NORSI, processes about 17 million tonnes of oil a year and is described as one of Russia's largest refineries. It has been targeted before. Newsbase reported that the plant was shut after a reported drone strike in June and was running at about a quarter of its capacity in September. Ukrainian forces were also reported to have struck its production facilities on the night of 26 August, causing a fire.

Other strikes were reported over the same period. Ukrainian forces were reported to have attacked an oil refinery in Yaroslavl early on 3 November. Russian missile and drone attacks were reported against energy sites in Ukraine, including the Ladyzhyn and Kryvorizka thermal power plants. A reported ballistic missile strike on the Kaniv hydroelectric plant has not been confirmed. Separately, Russian aerial bombs were reported to have killed at least 26 people at an aid centre in Komyshuvakha, in Zaporizhzhia region.

Several points remain unresolved. Ukraine's General Staff has not been found to have commented on a strike on Kstovo. No official damage assessment for the refinery has been made public, and it is unclear whether the plant was hit once or in more than one attack in recent days.