Kstovo oil refinery reported still burning after Ukrainian strike

Footage aired on 2 November by The Enforcer, a YouTube channel that follows the war, appeared to show the oil refinery at Kstovo, south of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, still on fire ¹. The channel said the plant was "continuing to burn as of today" ¹. No independent source has confirmed that the fire was still active at that point, and Russian authorities have not commented publicly.

In separate videos, the same channel said Ukraine had struck the Kstovo refinery within the previous 24 to 48 hours ³. It called the plant one of the largest in Russia ² and the fourth largest in the country ³. All three reports come from one channel, so they cannot be treated as independent of each other.

An X account that posts under the name Exilenova_plus separately reported that the Kstovo refinery had been attacked ⁴. Its post did not describe the damage or say which weapons were used.

Ukrainian media reported a drone attack on the refinery on 1 November. Those reports said videos of a large fire in Kstovo began circulating on social media in the early hours. Residents described hearing explosions, and monitoring channels said fires had broken out in several parts of the plant. The same accounts said the drones got through even though Russian air defences had stopped earlier attempts to hit the facility. Exilenova_plus was also reported to have mentioned a possible attack on a nearby heat and power plant.

Other online accounts claimed the refinery makes up about 5 percent of Russia's refining capacity. They also claimed Ukraine had hit three Russian refineries in a short span of days. These figures have not been independently verified.

No casualties have been reported. There has been no public statement from Nizhny Novgorod regional officials, Russia's Defence Ministry, the refinery's operator or Ukraine's General Staff about the attack or the extent of the damage.

Several other strikes on Russian energy sites were reported around the same time. A drone strike was reported on an oil pumping station near Samara on 1 November. Early on 3 November, Ukrainian forces were reported to have attacked the oil refinery in Yaroslavl. On 31 October, unconfirmed reports described a large Ukrainian drone attack on several Russian regions, including Bryansk. Russia, for its part, carried out a large drone and missile attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure on 2 November, including at the Ladyzhyn thermal power plant in Vinnytsia region.