A Ukrainian drone attack set fire to the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar region on Tuesday, Al Jazeera reports. Veniamin Kondratyev, the regional governor, said at least two people were killed and two injured by falling drone debris at Afipsky railway station.
Ukraine's general staff said its forces struck the refinery, and also targeted a gas processing plant in the Astrakhan region overnight. Russia's defence ministry said it had shot down 148 Ukrainian drones and that its own forces had hit a cargo vessel near Odesa carrying goods for Ukraine's military.
Note where the deaths occurred
The two people killed died at a railway station, from debris, not at the refinery.
That distinction matters for an accurate account of what this kind of warfare does. A drone campaign aimed at industrial targets produces casualties in the surrounding area, from interceptors, from wreckage and from misses, and those deaths are as real as any others. We are reporting them as the governor described them, which is the only account available.
The campaign this belongs to
Ukraine has spent this year striking Russian refineries and energy infrastructure, with the stated aim of reducing the revenue funding the war. The strikes have created a fuel shortage inside Russia, and the effects have reached well beyond it: we reported this week on petrol shortages across Central Asia, where several countries take most of their fuel from Russian refineries.
After meeting some 30 international leaders in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he intends to raise drone production for expanded strikes. The Kremlin described those who attended as the "party of war".
What the claims are worth
Every figure in this story comes from one of the two governments fighting.
Russia says it downed 148 drones, a number that cannot be checked and that both sides have an interest in shaping. Ukraine says it hit two facilities. The governor reports two deaths. We can be reasonably confident a refinery is on fire, because a regional governor confirming damage on his own territory is admitting something unhelpful to him.
What we could not establish
We could not establish the refinery's capacity or how badly it was damaged, whether output has stopped, the identities of those killed, or any independent verification of the drone tally. We verified this account from a single publication, and all military claims here are the respective governments' own.
