UAV event in Samara, Syzran Oil Refinery area, Russian Federation on Sun 28th December 2025

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces carried out a deep-strike drone attack on the Syzran oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region, hitting the plant’s only primary oil processing unit for the Samara region and a key oil player for the Volga region, according to Militarnyi. 

Kyiv has increasingly targeted Russian energy and logistics sites deep behind the front lines, seeking to offset Moscow’s near-daily missile and drone attacks on Ukraine by hitting infrastructure critical to Russia’s war effort.

Video footage showing the moment of impact was published by Exilenova+, which said the strike was conducted by the First Center of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. 

Exilenova+ reported that at least two energy-related facilities in the city were targeted during the attack.

Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) struck the refinery’s ELOU-AVT-6 unit – a combined electric desalting and atmospheric-vacuum distillation installation with a design capacity of 6 million tons of crude oil per year.

Militarnyi, a Ukrainian defense news outlet, wrote the Syzran refinery has only one such unit. If it is seriously damaged, that could trigger a de facto shutdown of the plant, it wrote.

The refinery’s main output is diesel fuel for Russia’s domestic market, including supplies used to support Russian occupation forces in Ukraine, according to Militarnyi. 

Syzran Refinery is included in the Samara refinery group of Rosneft, according to the company’s website. The plant produces about 2.5 million tons of diesel annually, making it a key fuel producer for the Samara region and an important part of the broader Volga region’s fuel balance, according to Militarnyi. 

Syzran refinery has been a repeated target of Ukrainian strikes. Since the beginning of 2025, Ukrainian attack drones have already hit production workshops at the site as well as the same ELOU-AVT-6 unit, according to Militarnyi.

In addition to the refinery, drones also struck a city power substation. Militarnyi speculated the target is likely the 220-kilovolt Syzranskaya substation.

Reports on Russian social media described temporary power and heating outages in residential areas following the attack. Air raid alarms in the Samara region were in effect from 12:31 a.m. to 7:40 a.m. local time.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that 12 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the region, without addressing reported damage on the ground, the media outlet wrote.