The military airfield in Borisoglebsk, the oil refineries in Tatarstan and the Saratov Region – the results of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ drone attack
On the night of 8 July, the Ukrainian military attacked oil and military facilities in several regions of Russia. According to monitoring sources, the targets included Rosneft’s Saratov oil refinery, the Krasnodarskaya compressor station, the Borisoglebsk military airfield in the Voronezh region, two oil tankers near Taganrog, and a petrochemical plant in Nizhnekamsk.
The Saratov Oil Refinery is one of Russia’s oldest oil refineries, with a processing capacity of around 4.8 million tonnes per year. The facility had previously been attacked on 31 May.
In Tatarstan, eyewitnesses have released footage of a large-scale fire at one of the oil facilities in Nizhnekamsk. The attack targeted the ‘Taneco’ oil refinery, owned by ‘Tatneft’, with a capacity of 16.2 million tonnes per year. Sources claim that the ‘Nizhnekamskneftekhim’ petrochemical complex, owned by ‘Sibur’, was also attacked. Both facilities had already been targeted by drone attacks on 12 June. The Tatarstan authorities did not report any hits.
On the evening of 7 July, the Krasnodarskaya compressor station in the Krasnodar Krai was also attacked. This is a Gazprom production complex that provides for the purification, dehydration and compression of natural gas for onward transport, in particular via the Blue Stream gas pipeline and the Dzhubga–Lazarevskoye–Sochi system. According to local authorities, a fire broke out on the premises of one of the facilities as a result of falling drone debris.
There are also reports of an attack on the Borisoglebsk military airfield in the Voronezh Region, where Su-34, Su-35S, Su-30SM aircraft and other aviation equipment are based. According to local residents, a fire broke out on the airfield’s premises. The airfield is also used as a military training base for the Assault and Bomber Aviation Faculty of the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation Pilot School.
According to the governor of the Rostov Region, drones attacked two oil tankers in the Taganrog Gulf as they were heading towards Rostov. The vessels sustained damage; as the tankers were empty, there was no oil spill.
The source notes that the vessels were likely travelling from Crimea, where they may have been delivering fuel. It is also claimed that over the past two days, drones have already struck ten similar tankers in the Sea of Azov.
