Ukraine’s Drone War Hits Russia’s Biggest Data Hub, Oil Refinery and Missile-Fuel Plant in One Night
Ukrainian long-range drones struck a major Yandex data center in Kaluga, an oil refinery in the Komi Republic and a missile-fuel component plant in Tver, while a fuel depot burned in Belgorod. The attacks push the war further into Russia’s interior, threatening energy supplies, cloud services and key inputs for cruise missiles.
Russian civilians woke up on 9 October to a version of the war that has long defined life in Ukraine: critical infrastructure in flames, services disrupted, and the sense that distance from the front offers less protection than it used to.
Ukraine launched a broad drone campaign overnight against targets across Russia’s interior, according to Ukrainian claims and Russian regional statements. Strikes and fires were reported at the Ukhta oil refinery in the Komi Republic, an oil depot near Stroitel in Belgorod oblast, the Redkinsky Experimental Plant in Tver oblast, and a major Yandex data center in Kaluga. Russian officials also reported extensive attempts by Ukrainian drones to penetrate air defenses in multiple regions.
Yandex confirmed that a UAV attack damaged part of its Kaluga data center, disabling several modules and forcing the company to warn of possible disruptions across some services. Ukrainian sources described the site as the largest data center in Russia, with a planned power capacity of 63 megawatts, providing the bulk of Yandex’s cloud computing. That level of power usage is comparable to the electricity needs of a sizable city district, meaning any prolonged outage can quickly spill over into daily life and business operations that rely on Russian cloud infrastructure.
For Russians, the effects are likely to show up less as dramatic explosions than as digital friction: slower apps, interrupted cloud tools, and reduced reliability for services that underpin banking, transport, advertising and basic internet search. The Kaluga site was hit just days after another Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan oblast, suffered serious damage; reconstruction of that facility’s physical infrastructure alone has been estimated in Russian discussions at 12–15 billion rubles ($141–176 million), not including the IT hardware inside. The back‑to‑back strikes point to a deliberate campaign to treat data infrastructure as a legitimate target in a war now heavily dependent on software and satellites.
In the far north, Ukrainian long-range drones reportedly struck Lukoil’s Ukhta refinery in the Komi Republic, with Ukrainian sources saying multiple impacts were recorded. The plant processes roughly 4.2 million tonnes of crude oil per year into gasoline, diesel and fuel oil, and it is described in Ukrainian reporting as part of Russia’s military logistics network, supplying fuel and lubricants to the armed forces. While Russian authorities had not detailed the extent of damage in early reports, any disruption at Ukhta would ripple across regional fuel supply and add cost and complexity to keeping Russian units supplied.
Further west, the Redkinsky Experimental Plant in Tver oblast was also attacked overnight, according to Ukrainian accounts. The plant is integrated into Russia’s military‑industrial complex and produces components for Decilin‑M, a specialized fuel used in Kh‑55 and Kh‑101 cruise missiles, as well as additives for diesel fuel and aviation kerosene. Targeting Redkinsky goes after the propellants that power some of Russia’s most important standoff weapons, rather than the missiles themselves. If production there is significantly degraded, it could constrain future cruise‑missile output or force Russia to reconfigure supply chains around alternative producers.
Closer to the border, NASA FIRMS satellite data and local reporting indicated a large fire at an oil depot near Stroitel in Belgorod oblast after explosions overnight. Ukrainian sources described this as the result of a mid‑range drone attack, part of wider strikes that also hit Luhansk city, causing power and internet outages. The Belgorod depot supports both local civilian fuel needs and logistics towards the Ukrainian front, so repeated hits there raise both insurance costs and physical risk for companies still willing to supply the region.
Taken together, these attacks mark a deepening phase of Ukraine’s long‑range campaign: not isolated symbolic hits, but a systematic effort to strain Russia’s energy network, erode its missile‑fuel capacity and knock out digital infrastructure that supports both the economy and the war effort. For companies like Yandex, the war is starting to look less like a distant policy issue and more like a direct operational threat to data centers, staff and investors.
A useful way to read this night of strikes is that modern war now runs through three grids at once: power, fuel and data. Ukraine is trying to fray all three inside Russia, just as Russia does the same on Ukrainian territory.
Key indicators to watch next will be the duration and scope of Yandex service disruptions, any confirmation from Lukoil or regional authorities on damage at Ukhta, and satellite or commercial imagery of the Redkinsky plant and Belgorod oil depot. Russian responses—whether through further mobilization of air defenses deep in the interior, retaliatory strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, or tighter information control around such incidents—will show how seriously Moscow views this new reach of Ukrainian drones.
Sources
- OSINT