Fire at Russia's Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery after overnight drone attack on Samara region
Several fires broke out at the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara region early on 30 October after a drone attack, according to residents, Ukrainian monitoring channels and the independent Russian outlet ASTRA. The plant, owned by Rosneft, makes jet fuel for the Russian air force. It is the first reported strike on a Russian refinery in nearly two weeks, a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine had informally paused such attacks under US pressure.
Residents of Novokuybyshevsk, a city next to Samara on the Volga, reported explosions and air defence fire early on Thursday, 30 October. The regional governor, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, said the region was under drone attack and that "air defence systems and mobile fire groups are operating", but gave no details about damage. According to ASTRA, an official drone alert was declared at around 6 a.m., when the attack was already under way.
Smoke over the refinery on the morning of 30 October:
Multiple fires raging at the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara Oblast following Ukrainian drone attack carried out in the early hours of October 30.
— @Archer83Able October 30, 2026
An ASTRA analyst used photos sent by readers to place the fire inside the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery. Footage shared by the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ and by the OSINT account Status-6 (@Archer83Able) on X shows thick black smoke over the plant; Status-6 counted at least six separate columns of smoke. The Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point posted that the refinery "welcomes guests from Ukraine". Ukraine's General Staff had not claimed the strike at the time of writing, Samara authorities had not confirmed that the refinery was hit, and the extent of the damage is not known.
Flights at Samara airport were restricted during the attack. Further west, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 862 Ukrainian drones had flown towards the Moscow region since the evening of 29 October, most of them shot down far from the city and 170 on the approach to the capital. Moscow's airports also suspended operations for a time.
The refinery has belonged to Rosneft since 2007 and can process about 8.8 million tonnes of crude oil a year. It makes more than 20 products, including Euro-5 petrol and diesel, bitumen, petroleum coke and jet fuel for Russia's Aerospace Forces. It has been hit before: after a strike on 18 April both of its main crude distillation units stopped, Reuters reported, and it was attacked again on 22 August.
The attack comes a day after the Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials, that Ukrainian long-range strike units had informally stopped hitting Russian refineries under pressure from the Trump administration, possibly until after the US midterm elections. President Volodymyr Zelensky has said there is no order to stop such strikes. The last reported attacks on Russia's oil sector before Thursday were on the Ryazan refinery on 15 October and on a facility in Surgut on 16 October.