Bloomberg reported that Lukoil PJSC’s facility in the Perm region and a smaller oil-processing plant in Novoshakhtinsk, in the southern Russian Rostov region, caught fire after the attacks, Ukraine’s General Staff said Friday in a Telegram statement. While Lukoil did not respond to request for a comment, according to Bloomberg, Rostov governor, Yury Slyusar said earlier on Friday that the Novoshakhtinsk refinery had halted operations after a swarm of drones attacked the region. Satellite imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System showed heat anomalies – potentially indicating fires – in an industrial area of Perm, including the refinery site.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held separate meetings with representatives of the Trump Administration on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The US has pushed both sides to agree to an energy-assets truce as global diesel prices surge, though as yet a deal remains elusive. The 260,000-barrel-a-day Perm facility was last attacked by drones earlier this month.
The 110,000-barrel-a-day Novoshakhtinsk plant was struck a month ago. Ukraine has kept up a wave of attacks on Russian refineries in an effort to reduce the Kremlin’s ability to produce and sell oil products, and create public discontent with the invasion.“We are responding to Russia’s brutal strikes against life,” Zelenskyy said on X Friday. Russian forces have been carrying out intense strikes on civilian infrastructure amid air defense shortages in Ukraine.
Eight regions of Ukraine came under attack overnight, with one person killed in Odesa and another, a 14-year-old boy, in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said. The loss of fuel supplies has forced Russia to impose a temporary ban on most exports of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The White House itself is also looking into a possible US diesel-export ban to bring down surging domestic prices.
