Ukraine strikes Russia's fourth-largest oil refinery in one of its largest drone waves yet

Ukrainian forces launched one of their largest coordinated drone strikes of the war against Russian territory overnight between August 25 and 26, hitting 16 targets in a single sweep, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. The most economically significant was the Lukoil-owned NORSI refinery in Kstovo, in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region roughly 400 kilometers east of Moscow — the country's fourth-largest refinery and its second-largest producer of gasoline.

The strike forced NORSI to halt all crude processing, according to Reuters reporting cited by Ukrinform, which said the attack damaged "several processing units, inter-unit infrastructure and general plant facilities." Ukraine's General Staff confirmed the strike on its official Telegram channel, reporting a fire broke out on the site. Lukoil declined to comment to Reuters. With NORSI offline, all of Lukoil's major domestic refineries are now reportedly out of action at once — its Perm plant halted after an August 21 strike and its Volgograd facility suspended since July 31.

The numbers

NORSI processes roughly 15 to 17 million tonnes of crude a year, alongside significant volumes of diesel, jet fuel and bitumen. It is the refinery's fifth strike of 2026 alone, following attacks in April, May, June and July, according to the Kyiv Independent. Separately overnight, Ukrainian drones destroyed a Wildberries logistics warehouse roughly 100,000 square meters in size — about the footprint of 14 football fields — in Kotovsk, in Russia's Tambov region some 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow. Tambov Governor Yevgeny Pervyshov said the site was "completely destroyed by fire," according to Al Jazeera; one person was injured. Ukraine has accused Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, and rival Ozon of supporting the Russian military's supply chain, an allegation both companies deny.

The overnight campaign was not without cost to Ukraine. At least 12 people were killed in connection with the strikes and their aftermath: nine when a drone hit a passenger bus on the Lysychansk-Stakhanov road in Russian-occupied Luhansk, an adult and a 14-year-old killed in a house fire sparked by a drone in Russia's Lipetsk region, and a woman killed in the Belgorod region. Russia's Ministry of Defense said its air defenses intercepted 426 Ukrainian drones overnight across 15 regions and occupied Crimea, a figure that could not be independently verified. Russian forces struck back at Ukrainian energy infrastructure the same night, damaging a combined heat-and-power plant in Kherson with guided aerial bombs, according to Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz.

A war fought over fuel

The strike is the latest escalation in a deep-strike campaign Kyiv has waged for more than two years against Russia's oil-refining and military-logistics network, intended to raise the economic cost of the invasion and squeeze fuel supplies to Russian forces at the front. Ukrainian officials have described the strategy plainly: degrade the refineries that keep Russian tanks, trucks and aircraft fueled, and degrade the export revenue that funds the war. NORSI alone has now been hit five times in 2026 — in April, May, June, July and this latest strike — a cadence that suggests Kyiv regards the plant as a standing target rather than a one-off objective.

The campaign has coincided with reports of diesel and gasoline shortages spreading across Russian regions, which officials in Moscow have partly attributed to the repeated refinery strikes rather than to Western sanctions alone. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has separately tracked how disruptions to Russian refining capacity have shifted regional fuel-export flows over the past year, even as Moscow has continued to sell discounted crude to buyers in India and China largely unaffected by the refinery damage, since that oil is exported raw rather than processed domestically first.

Governor Gleb Nikitin of Nizhny Novgorod, where NORSI is located, confirmed to wire reporters that an attack had occurred, without disputing the extent of the damage described by Ukrainian officials. Reuters reported the refinery gave no timeline for resuming operations. With Lukoil's Perm and Volgograd refineries already offline from earlier strikes, the loss of NORSI's output removes a meaningful share of the company's total domestic refining capacity at once, though Lukoil itself has not published an estimate of the combined impact.

Who is affected

The immediate toll fell on Russian civilians in the strike zones and on the workers and communities tied to the refinery and the Wildberries warehouse. Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, and its rival Ozon have both denied Ukraine's characterization that their logistics networks support military supply chains, though neither company has offered a detailed rebuttal of the specific claim. Motorists and haulers across the affected regions are likely to feel the more diffuse effect of reduced refining capacity in the weeks ahead, a pattern that has repeated after previous strikes on Russia's refining network throughout the war. On the Ukrainian side, residents of Kherson faced renewed disruption after Russian guided bombs damaged the city's combined heat-and-power plant the same night, according to Naftogaz.

"The war must return to where it came from. Ukraine responds to Russian strikes, and we do so in a way that ensures the cost of the war for the aggressor inevitably rises," Zelensky wrote, adding that Ukrainian forces had struck "long-range responses against oil facilities — Russia's oil wallet that finances the war."

The strikes come as diplomatic contacts around ending the war continue in the background; Moscow has said it remains open to "new ideas" for a settlement provided they match President Vladimir Putin's terms. Neither government has signaled any near-term change to the pattern of strikes and counterstrikes that has defined the war's energy front for more than a year.

What happens next

With NORSI, Perm and Volgograd all reportedly offline simultaneously, analysts are watching for further evidence of fuel shortages inside Russia and for any effect on the discounted crude Moscow continues to export to buyers in India and China. Reuters and Ukrainian officials both said no repair timeline had been given for the Kstovo refinery. Kyiv has given no indication it will pause the campaign, and Moscow has not detailed further retaliatory plans beyond the strike on Kherson's power plant carried out the same night.