Drones Hit Bashneft-Novoil Refinery in Ufa

Ukrainian long-range strike drones targeted the northern industrial hub of Ufa in the Republic of Bashkortostan overnight into Saturday, Oct. 31, striking the “Bashneft-Novoil” refinery and potentially a second adjacent refining facility within one of the largest petroleum refining clusters in Russia. Residents in Ufa reported hearing low-flying drone engines followed by loud detonations across the city’s northern industrial district.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis of eyewitness photographs conducted by Astra confirmed that an aerial impact ignited a major fire at the Bashneft-Novoil refinery. Preliminary visual assessments by OSINT analysts indicate that the fire specifically engulfed the enterprise’s L-35 catalytic reforming unit. The L-35 unit is an essential technological component of the refining cycle, responsible for producing high-octane gasoline blending components – reformates – and the hydrogen essential for hydrotreating and desulfurizing motor fuels. Without an operational catalytic reformer, the refinery is technically incapable of yielding modern, high-grade motor fuels. Monitoring group Crimean Wind reported that incoming drones struck two separate industrial enterprises in the northern industrial perimeter. The monitor noted that blazes were detected both at Bashneft-Novoil and at the adjacent “Bashneft-UNPZ” refinery, pointing to a coordinated strike across the multi-plant refining hub. Other Topics of Interest Erdoğan’s Veiled Message to Aliyev as Kazakhstan Proposes Inviting Russia Into Turkic Bloc Aliyev skips Erdoğan’s summit as Kazakhstan proposes bringing Russia into the Turkic bloc. The aerial assault prompted Russian civil aviation authorities to enact emergency airspace closures. Rosaviatsiya suspended all departures and arrivals at Ufa International Airport, while precautionary flight restrictions and ground delays were instituted at regional airports in neighboring Kazan and Samara. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in an operational summary that its air defense units intercepted and destroyed 433 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles overnight across 19 administrative regions. Vital component of Ufa’s 23.5-million-ton refining cluster The Bashneft-Novoil plant (also known as Novo-Ufimsky) operates as a primary production branch of Bashneft, a subsidiary of Russian state-controlled oil producer Rosneft. The facility manufactures Euro-6 motor gasolines, commercial diesel fuel, jet propulsion kerosene, and specialized industrial lubricant oils. Bashneft manages three major refineries situated adjacent to one another in Ufa’s northern industrial belt: Bashneft-Ufaneftekhim, Bashneft-Novoil, and Bashneft-UNPZ. Together, they constitute the Ufa refining complex, an industrial refining hub boasting an aggregate crude processing capacity of approximately 23.5 million metric tons per year. The refining hub in Ufa, located approximately 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of the Ukrainian frontier, was previously targeted. A major industrial blaze was recorded across the city’s refining complex on Sept. 21, 2026, following earlier long-range drone interdictions. Resumption of the downstream energy interdiction campaign The kinetic strike in Ufa follows an attack 24 hours earlier against the Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery in Russia’s Samara region, which was struck alongside an enterprise producing combat food rations overnight into Friday, Oct. 30. The Novokuybyshevsk facility, an 8.8-million-ton Rosneft refinery producing specialized jet fuel for the Russian Aerospace Forces, marked the first reported Ukrainian strike on a Russian oil refinery in nearly two weeks. That operational pause followed strikes on the Ryazan Oil Refinery on Oct. 15 and an industrial energy site in Surgut on Oct. 16. The temporary cessation of downstream refinery strikes coincided with sustained diplomatic pressure from US President Donald Trump, who urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to suspend attacks on Russian petroleum processing facilities and energy infrastructure, citing global fuel price inflation. Ukrainian defense forces redirected deep-strike assets toward Russia’s metallurgical, chemical, and defense component manufacturing bases. Recent interdictions targeted the Avisma titanium plant in Berezniki, the Omsky Kauchuk propellant and polymer facility in Siberia, the Tolyattikauchuk synthetic rubber plant in Samara, and the Energiya defense battery plant in Yelets. Tymur Dubovyk - journalist, newsfeed editor