Ukraine Says It Targeted Volgograd Refinery With Capacity of 15 Million Tonnes a Year
Key Facts
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces targeted an oil refinery in the city of Volgograd during the night of November 13, causing a fire. The refinery has capacity to process about 15 million tonnes of crude oil a year, according to the General Staff. The Ukrainian armed forces said the facility produces gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The Associated Press reported that the General Staff announced the strike, while attributing details about production and capacity to the Ukrainian armed forces. The information places the refinery at the center of the announced attack on Russian energy facilities, without specifying the scale of operational damage or the duration of any disruption.
The Ukrainian armed forces said the strike hit the AVT-1, AVT-3, AVT-5 and AVT-6 oil distillation units, along with a hydrotreating unit and a railway loading and unloading facility. It added that six storage tanks were hit, each with a capacity of 2,000 cubic meters. The reported targeting of distillation units and transport and storage facilities means the damage described covered different stages of crude processing and product handling. But the armed forces’ statement did not specify how much production had stopped or whether all the units had gone out of service. The General Staff said the attack caused a fire, without giving a casualty figure or an estimated repair timeline.
The Ukrainian armed forces said the refinery is one of the main fuel suppliers to the Russian army in the south. It added that fuel produced there is sent to front lines and to airfields used by aircraft carrying out strikes on Ukraine. The description links the refinery’s output to military uses, according to the Ukrainian account, and explains why the facility was included among the attack’s targets. The available evidence included no specific Russian comment on the strike’s effect on fuel supplies or military operations. Nor did the available information include independent confirmation of the damage Kyiv said had hit processing units and tanks.
In a separate statement reported by the Associated Press, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses had downed 1,198 long-range Ukrainian drones from late Thursday to Friday morning. Local officials reported that 7 people were killed and 17 injured in strikes on three Russian regions during the attack announced on November 14. The report did not link those casualties specifically to the targeting of the Volgograd refinery. On the Ukrainian side, authorities said Russia launched 117 drones at Ukraine during the night of November 14. Officials said a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia on Friday, November 13, injured 30 people, including 6 children.
A Ukrainian official said Russian attacks on energy infrastructure caused widespread power outages on Friday, November 13, across about half of the country’s regions. Artem Nekrasov, the first deputy energy minister, said the outages followed attacks on energy facilities. In a report on earlier targets, the Ukrainian armed forces said their strikes since October 30 had hit the Omsk, Kirishi, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl refineries, which it described as among Russia’s five largest. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry also said October strikes hit at least 30 targets inside Russia, including 7 military-industrial and aerospace facilities and 3 military airfields. These figures remain the Ukrainian side’s announced tally of earlier operations, separate from details of the Volgograd strike.
On the diplomatic front, U.S. envoy Jared Kushner said European participation in the talks would allow discussions of postwar European security arrangements alongside regional issues between Ukraine and Russia. The Associated Press quoted U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Kushner as saying further rounds of talks were planned as negotiators sought to make progress in peace efforts. The report did not specify a date for the next rounds. This comes alongside the continuing reciprocal attacks detailed by the agency. Kushner said Europe’s presence at the negotiating table would allow broader postwar security arrangements to be addressed alongside regional issues between the two countries.