Ukrainian drone strike forces one of Russia’s largest oil refineries to close

The largest oil refinery in northwestern Russia has been forced to cease operations after being targeted in a Ukrainian drone strike, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The attack on the Kirishi Refinery in Russia’s Leningrad region means that, alongside the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk, all three major oil logistics hubs on Russia’s Baltic coast are currently damaged and unable to operate at full capacity.

The largest oil refinery in the Leningrad region and one of the largest in Russia, Kirishi has a processing capacity of approximately 20 million tonnes of crude oil per year. In 2024, the plant processed 17.5 million tonnes of oil, or some 6.6% of all oil refined in Russia.

Over the past few days, Kyiv has ramped up its strikes on Russian oil facilities in a bid to prevent Moscow profiting from high oil prices and increased demand, amid global supply disruptions caused by the war in Iran.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that up to 40% of Russia’s crude oil export capacity, about 2 million barrels per day, was out of action as a result of the Ukrainian attacks on critical infrastructure. That figure also includes unrealised exports through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary, which has been closed since January.

Robert Brovdi, a top Ukrainian drone commander, said on Telegram that the strike on Kirishi was part of a “systematic” approach by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces to attack Russia’s “oil arteries, refining, and export of raw materials”.

Oil logistics in northwestern Russia’s Leningrad region had been “slightly disrupted”, Brovdi added, thanks to what he called a “freedom-loving Ukrainian Bird and his pyrotechnic displays”.

On Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of also targeting critical oil infrastructure belonging to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which transports oil from Kazakhstan to Russia’s Black Sea port in Novorossiysk, and condemned Ukraine’s strategy as “energy blackmail”.