A fire broke out overnight at the Afipsky Oil Refinery in Russia's Krasnodar Krai region. Local accounts and footage shared on social media indicate the incident involved explosions and heavy smoke following a Ukrainian attack; however, there is no independent confirmation of the attack.
Residents of Afipsky reported hearing explosions throughout the night and said air defense systems were activated. Videos shared online showed flames and smoke in the skies over the city.
One of the region's largest refineries
The Afipsky Oil Refinery is among the largest oil processing facilities in southern Russia. The plant produces gasoline, diesel fuel, gas condensate distillates, heavy oil residues and sulfur.
The refinery processes approximately 6.25 million tons of crude oil per year, accounting for about 2 percent of Russia's total refinery output. The facility has previously been targeted by Ukrainian attacks.
Targeted before
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces announced on March 14 that a successful drone strike had been carried out on the facility. That attack reportedly caused a fire and damaged some sections of the refinery.
The plant was also targeted in January of this year, as well as in September and November of 2025, with those attacks also sparking fires on site. The latest incident at Afipsky stands out as the newest link in a chain of attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure.
Deep strikes inside Russia continue
Ukraine regularly carries out deep strikes on military and industrial facilities inside Russia. These attacks mostly use domestically produced drones, though Ukraine's arsenal of domestic and foreign-made missiles is also occasionally deployed.
In another large-scale attack on Russia a day earlier, Ukraine's FP-5 Flamingo missiles struck a military factory in the city of Cheboksary in Chuvashia that supplies drone and missile components to Russian forces. The strike on a target roughly 970 kilometers away highlighted Ukraine's deep-strike capability.
Ukraine has previously been known to use its own Neptune anti-ship missiles and hybrid "rocket-drone" systems such as Peklo and Palianytsia, as well as targeting Russia and Russian-occupied territories with British-made Storm Shadow, US-made ATACMS and Franco-Italian SCALP missiles.
