Overnight into Monday, drones struck the Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery in the town of Kirishi in Russia’s Leningrad region and started a fire there. That is reported by the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, citing the independent Russian media outlet ASTRA and Ukrainian monitoring channels on Telegram, as well as the news outlet Deutsche Welle (DW).
According to DW, the governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, confirmed that a drone had struck the industrial area of the town of Kirishi, without naming the company affected. According to his account, Russian air defence shot down 113 drones over the region during the night. That figure could not be independently verified, as Hromadske writes.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, ASTRA reports that the Kirishi refinery is on fire in the Leningrad region. It is an important fuel supplier for Saint Petersburg and supplies aviation kerosene for Pulkovo Airport. An OSINT analyst from ASTRA confirmed, using videos from Kirishi, that the refinery there is on fire. According to DW, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ writes that there are several seats of fire on the plant grounds. According to ASTRA, residents of Kirishi report the deployment of air defence, heavy explosions in the area of the refinery and the evacuation of an apartment block.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, preliminary reports say that one of the primary oil processing units, “ELOU-AVT-2”, caught fire; the units “ELOU-AVT-6” and “ELOU-AT-6” were also hit. According to Hromadske, the extent of the damage was not immediately clear at first.
The refinery lies around 100 kilometres south-east of Saint Petersburg and belongs to the Surgutneftegas group. According to Hromadske, it is Russia’s second-largest refinery by processing capacity and the largest in the north-west of the country. According to Ukrainska Pravda and DW, its design capacity is around 20 to 21 million tonnes of oil per year. In recent years, according to DW, the plant processed around 18 million tonnes annually, about 7 per cent of all oil processing in Russia. It produces petrol, diesel, aviation kerosene, heating oil, bitumen, liquefied gas and petrochemical products.
In 2025, the USA imposed sanctions on Surgutneftegas and affiliated structures, including the refinery in Kirishi; the EU and the United Kingdom also imposed sanctions on the company, as Ukrainska Pravda reports.
The plant has already been the target of drone attacks several times. According to Ukrainska Pravda, the refinery shut down operations completely after an attack in March. Most recently, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked the company in August; according to DW, after the attack at the end of August 2026 the plant stopped oil processing completely because two primary processing units were damaged.
