Drones hit Russian oil facility 1,500 km from border in first attack in Kirov region

According to several Russian media reports on Wednesday, August 28, unidentified drones attacked a fuel depot in the town of Kotelnich in the Kirov region of Russia, about 1,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

“A few minutes ago, Kotelnich was attacked by a drone. The drone attacked a fuel tank,” reported the governor of the Russian region, Alexander Sokolov.

According to him, the fire was contained and there were no injuries. The governor assured, as usual, that “the situation is under control.”

According to the Russian Telegram channel Baza, preliminary reports indicate that drones attacked a fuel depot at the Vyatka plant in Kotelnich. Baza reports that there were three drones in total and that after the impact, one of the tanks caught fire. Two drones attacked the fuel depot at the Vyatka plant: one hit the fuel cap and the second hit an empty tank.

There is no official confirmation of this information yet. However, Baza has released a video that supposedly shows the moment of the strike and in which a fire can be seen breaking out.

Russian state media TASS reports that there were five drone strikes in the area, but local residents in chat groups say there were six attacks. This is the first drone attack by Ukrainian forces in the Kirov region since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

The Kyiv Post contacted its sources in Ukrainian intelligence but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

The Kirov region near Kazan, where Russian authorities temporarily closed the airport on the morning of August 28 due to a drone attack, is about 1,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Kyiv Post sources in the HUR reported that in the early hours of Wednesday, August 28, Ukrainian-made drones of the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) and the Special Operations Forces (SOF) attacked the FDKU “Atlas” oil depot, managed by the Federal Agency for State Reserves of Russia, near Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in Russia's Rostov Region.

The attacked facility is part of the Russian military-industrial complex and a crucial link in the fuel supply to the Russian occupation forces.

Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil depots are a crucial part of a strategy to weaken Russia's oil sector, its most important economic asset.