All of Lukoil’s major refineries in Russia are now offline after a Ukrainian drone strike halted crude processing at its NORSI plant on 26 August, Reuters reported the shutdown. NORSI is Russia’s fourth-largest refinery and second-largest gasoline producer.

Ukraine’s General Staff said it had struck the refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, where a fire subsequently broke out. It said the refinery helps supply Russia’s armed forces.

Industry sources told Reuters that several processing units and other plant infrastructure had been damaged. No repair timetable is available, and Lukoil did not respond to the agency’s request for comment.

NORSI can process about 15 million tons of crude annually and produce about 5 million tons of gasoline and more than 5 million tons of diesel, according to Reuters.

A Reuters dispatch in The Moscow Times said Lukoil listed no NORSI-made gasoline, diesel, or other petroleum products for sale on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange after the shutdown.

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NORSI’s closure followed the complete shutdown of Lukoil’s Perm refinery after a 21 August drone strike. The company’s Volgograd plant had already stopped processing on 31 July.

The Moscow Times listed four previous occasions this year when drone strikes stopped NORSI from processing crude: 5 April, 20 May, 24 June, and 2 July. The latest attack, therefore, produced the plant’s fifth drone-related shutdown in less than five months.

Lukoil also operates a smaller refinery in Ukhta, which remains active.

Kremlin threatens retaliation

Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Governor Gleb Nikitin wrote that Russian forces had “repelled” more than 40 drones. He also reported damage to an unnamed industrial enterprise, several homes, and cars.

A day later, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov promised a “harsh response” to Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s economic and trade infrastructure.

Russia is facing its second bout of fuel shortages this summer. Gasoline sales limits have returned to Moscow and St. Petersburg, while Rosneft has capped purchases at 30 liters per vehicle across its filling-station network, The Moscow Times reported.

Kommersant reported that Astrakhan Oblast had capped gasoline purchases at 30 liters and was serving drivers according to odd- and even-numbered license plates. Orenburg Oblast introduced a similar system and capped purchases at 30 liters to preserve supplies for emergency services and public transport, Governor Yevgeny Solntsev announced.

Five days before NORSI stopped, the Russian government ordered officials to distribute available fuel more evenly between and within regions. Russia also plans to extend its diesel export ban through September as refinery outages constrain domestic supplies.

Ukraine struck one of Russia's largest oil refineries deep in the Urals and a military airfield overnight in a long-range attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on 21 August. The Ukrainian Army's General Staff confirmed the refinery and airfield hits, while Zelenskyy said the same night also reached the Black Sea and brought fresh damage from earlier strikes on a Russian warplane and a drone-launch site.

Fire at a major Lukoil refinery in Perm

Zelenskyy said the overnight drones hit the Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez refinery — known as PNOS — in Perm, where the General Staff recorded a fire on the plant's grounds. The target sits more than 1,500 km from Ukraine's northern border, in a region near the Ural Mountains.

The refinery is one of Russia's largest, able to process more than 13 million tons of crude a year, with more than half its output sold abroad until recently. It supplies fuel to both Russia's economy and its army.

Ukrainian Telegram channels Supernova+ and Exilenova+ shared footage of explosions and a rising plume, with locals reporting a series of blasts at the site. Russia's Perm Krai authorities claimed they repelled the attack and downed 16 drones.

Kyiv has repeatedly hit the plant through the year. After a strike at the end of July, it had been running well below capacity.

Airfield, Black Sea, and other targets the same night

The General Staff said the same night's drones also struck the Marinovka military airfield in Volgograd Oblast, located in Russia's Volga region, with the damage still being assessed, while Zelenskyy added that Ukraine achieved unspecified results in the Black Sea. The military also reported hitting a drone storage and launch site near Donetsk, a materiel warehouse in occupied Crimea, two command posts in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, and six relay stations in Crimea used to steer Russia's Geran and Gerbera attack drones.

Zelenskyy also confirmed damage from earlier strikes: a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber hit at the Akhtubinsk airfield, about 600 km from the front line, and a drone store and launch site struck at Primorsko-Akhtarsk, roughly 180 km away. The strike extends a run of deep hits this month, from the TANECO refinery in Tatarstan and a Black Sea oil terminal to three refineries hit in one night and an Omsk refinery struck 2,500 km away in Siberia.

Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia overnight into 31 July, lighting fires at a major refinery and a warehouse hub in Volgograd and reaching more than 1,100 km east into Tatarstan by morning, Russian officials and monitoring channels reported. The retailer and the local governor both acknowledged the blazes. The wave extended Ukraine's twin campaigns against Russian fuel and commercial logistics.

Volgograd: a refinery and a Wildberries hub ablaze

The Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ began reporting explosions in Volgograd around 02:30, then shared photos and videos of dense smoke. It identified two targets: a Wildberries logistics complex and Lukoil's Volgograd refinery, and by 03:46 counted at least two sites struck. The Russian news Telegram channel Astra reached the same conclusion through open-source analysis of eyewitness footage.

Volgograd Oblast Governor Andrei Bocharov confirmed the drone strikes. He said fires broke out overnight at a fuel-and-energy enterprise in the south of the city and at warehouses in the Dzerzhinsky district, and five people were allegedly hospitalized.

Wildberries confirmed a fire at its logistics center after the strike. The hub spans more than 48,000 m² and serves Volgograd, Astrakhan, and neighboring regions, and it was still burning hours later.

The refinery is Lukoil's Volgograd plant, the largest fuel producer in Russia's Southern Federal District, with a design capacity of about 15.7 million tons of crude a year. It makes diesel and aviation fuel that supply Russian forces in Ukraine's south, and it sits about 500 km from the front line. Ukraine had already struck it at the end of May, and it was ablaze again by morning.

Tatarstan: smoke over Zelenodolsk, explosions in Nizhnekamsk

By morning, residents near Kazan reported explosions across Tatarstan. Astra's analysis pointed to a second Wildberries complex in Zelenodolsk, with smoke seen over the building, and Exilenova+ placed the strike there too, though no official confirmation of a hit followed. One of the shared videos showed a near miss, with a drone striking the ground next to the warehouse. 

Zelenodolsk district head Mikhail Afanasyev claimed a drone was repelled with no destruction, and Wildberries said that the warehouse was operating normally. Drones had already targeted it on 23 July.

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In Nizhnekamsk, locals described over 30 explosions and a flare burning intensely at a refinery, though whether a strike caused it stayed unclear. Exilenova+ said a local refinery cut pressure amid the raid. The city's main oil-processing plants, TANECO and TAIF-NK, sit in one industrial zone. Mayor Radmir Belyaev claimed drones were downed with no damage. Airports in Kazan, Nizhnekamsk, and Bugulma temporarily halted flights.

A campaign against warehouses and refineries

The drive against Wildberries opened on 18 July and has hit at least 18 distribution centers in two weeks, knocking out more than 15% of the retailer's storage, one tally found. Ukraine has kept Wildberries under sanctions since 2021 and lists it as a retailer that also moves military gear.

The refinery strikes run in parallel and stretch back to last August. On 29 July, drones hit a Lukoil refinery in Perm, which halted about a third of its capacity per Reuters sources, and Rosneft's Ryazan plant. Of 26 refineries knocked out in recent months, Russia had returned only eight to full work by late July, the Financial Times reported.