A Kstovo refinery strike early Sunday, Nov. 1, left what a regional governor called “significant damage” at an industrial site in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, the third night in a row that drones have reached a Russian fuel-processing area. Hours earlier and in the other direction, Russia launched 433 drones at Ukraine, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people, RFE/RL reported.
Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin said on Telegram that an “industrial enterprise” in the Kstovo district was damaged and that more than 100 drones had been destroyed over the region, with no casualties. He did not name the plant. Ukrainian outlets identified it as Lukoil’s Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery, known as NORSI, one of Russia’s largest.
What was hit in the Kstovo refinery strike
NORSI sits near Kstovo, about 400 kilometers east of Moscow, and can process roughly 17 million metric tons of crude a year. Reuters, as cited by Hromadske, has described it as Russia’s fourth-largest refinery and its second-largest producer of gasoline. The plant was halted after a drone strike on Aug. 26 and was running at about a quarter of capacity in September, according to the same reporting.
Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a terrorism case over the attack, the state news agency TASS reported, according to ABC News. Unverified claim, TASS (Russian state news agency) Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses destroyed 235 Ukrainian drones overnight across several regions. Unverified claim, Russian Ministry of Defense (Russian government, party to the conflict) Neither claim could be independently checked.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Russian state television that Ukraine had resumed attacks on refineries after a pause. Unverified claim, Russian state television (Alexander Novak) (Russian government) The pattern this week supports that point: drones reached the Novokuibyshevsk refinery area in Samara region overnight Oct. 29-30 and the refinery complex in Ufa, Bashkortostan, overnight Oct. 30-31, according to Bloomberg reporting summarized by bne IntelliNews. Its running tally counts 27 Russian refineries hit in about 210 strikes since the campaign began.
Russia’s 433-drone attack on Ukraine
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 433 drones overnight, 64 of them jet-powered Shahed types, and that 371 were shot down or electronically suppressed. It recorded hits at 16 locations and falling debris at 14 more. Strikes on energy infrastructure in the Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers, and grid operators imposed emergency outages in Kyiv, according to the Kyiv Independent, which reported one person killed and 47 injured across Ukraine over the past day.
By a Boston Report calculation, the air force figures mean about 86% of the drones were stopped and 62 got through or were not accounted for. Even with a high interception rate, that many hits on power plants and substations in one night is enough to force blackouts across several regions.
By the numbers: a week of strikes
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia fired about 1,940 drones, more than 1,580 guided aerial bombs and 44 missiles, 36 of them ballistic, at Ukraine over the past week. The week before, he gave totals of about 2,300 drones, about 1,600 bombs and 48 missiles, as reported by Ukrinform on Oct. 25.
That is a drop of roughly 16% in drones week over week, a TBR calculation, but it still averages about 277 drones a day. Guided bombs, which fall mostly on front-line towns, were nearly flat. The NBC News account of the latest strikes notes that U.S. efforts to get both sides to pause attacks on energy targets have not held.
We covered the previous round on Oct. 31 in our report on Ukraine’s blackouts and the strike on a Rostov rocket-fuel plant, and on the U.S. approval of 500 Patriot interceptors for Ukraine, which Kyiv says may take years to arrive.
Talks, truce and what to watch
On the diplomatic track, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Vladimir Putin would take a call from Zelenskyy if one were requested, and that any first round of talks should include only Russia, Ukraine and the United States. A local truce around Oleshky on the occupied left bank of the Dnipro River was in its last scheduled day on Sunday.
Three things to watch: whether Lukoil or Russian officials confirm the extent of damage at NORSI, whether more refinery strikes follow and push Russian fuel exports lower, and whether Ukraine’s grid can recover between waves as temperatures drop in November.
Sources
- RFE/RL: Russia hits Ukraine’s power grid as drones strike Nizhny Novgorod region
- Kyiv Independent: Russian attacks kill 1, injure 47, leave hundreds of thousands without power
- ABC News (Australia): Russia opens terrorism case over Ukraine oil refinery attack
- bne IntelliNews: Missile War Monitor, drone attack damages plant in Kstovo
- NBC News: Russian strikes cut power to thousands in Ukraine
- Ukrinform: Zelensky says Russia launched 1,600 guided bombs, 48 missiles and nearly 2,300 drones in one week
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