Fresh fire reported in industrial zone of Russia's Kuibyshev oil refinery — video

It remains unconfirmed whether the latest blaze was triggered by follow-on drone strikes or the reignition of damage caused during the previous day's assault.

Operated by Rosneft state-owned oil giant, Kuibyshev refinery is a major energy asset with an annual processing throughput of approximately 7 million metric tons of crude oil (roughly 140,000 barrels per day).

On Sept. 22, AFU General Staff formally confirmed that Ukrainian units had struck the Kuibyshev refinery in Samara, alongside the Bashneft-UNPZ refinery in Ufa, igniting large-scale industrial fires across both production sites.

Specialized monitoring outfit Fire Point reported that the Sept. 22 attack successfully struck the plant's AVT-4 and AVT-5 primary crude distillation units. Fire Point added that the operation was executed using Ukrainian-manufactured FP-1 long-range strike drones.

The refinery has faced repeated disruptions from Ukrainian deep-strike operations:

June 2026 disruption: Kuibyshev plant was forced to completely halt crude refining operations following a drone strike that damaged critical distillation equipment and sparked heavy fires. The attack knocked both the AVT-4 and AVT-5 units offline; each unit has a rated daily refining capacity of approximately 10,000 metric tons of crude oil (around 73,000 barrels per day).

Prior wartime strikes: The facility previously suffered operational shutdowns following Ukrainian drone strikes in August 2025 and March 2024.