# Russia and Ukraine trade infrastructure blows as Abu Dhabi talks near

*Monday, November 9, 2026 at 8:06 AM UTC — Hamer Intelligence Services Desk*

**Published**: 2026-11-09T08:06:41.559Z (51m ago)
**Category**: conflict | **Region**: Eastern Europe
**Importance**: 9/10
**Sources**: OSINT
**Permalink**: https://hamerintel.com/data/articles/22952.md
**Source**: https://hamerintel.com/summaries

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**Deck**: On the eve of planned talks in Abu Dhabi, Russia and Ukraine are hitting each other’s critical infrastructure with drones and missiles from Leningrad to the Dnipro River. Refinery fires, blackouts, bridge closures and new missile guidance tech show how both sides are trying to bend the battlespace before diplomats sit down.

As Russian and Ukrainian delegations prepare for U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi on 10–11 November, their militaries are zeroing in on infrastructure targets that shape the war far beyond individual front lines.

Overnight, Ukraine launched one of its largest recorded drone raids against Russian territory, with Moscow claiming air defenses shot down 430 drones across multiple regions. Despite those interceptions, Russian officials acknowledged that the Kirishi oil refinery in Leningrad region was struck and ignited, with regional governor Alexander Drozdenko confirming a fire at the site. Ukrainian sources described Kirishi as the eighth Russian refinery targeted this month.

Russia answered with its own long-range campaign. Ukrainian authorities reported that Geran-2 and Geran-4 drones hit electrical substations across Dnipropetrovsk region, including major industrial centers such as Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih, as well as Synelnykove, Pavlohrad and Shakhtarske. Large areas experienced power outages. In parallel, Russian strikes were reported against energy, commercial and residential locations in northern Rivne region, and against a railway traction substation in Vinnytsia.

Bridges over the Dnipro River around Kyiv have become another focal point. Two days after Russian Iskander-M ballistic missiles hit the “Northern” Bridge in the capital, the crossing remains closed in both directions, forcing traffic onto the Paton Bridge and creating significant jams. A senior Ukrainian presidential adviser on defense technologies said Russia has begun fitting its Iskander-M missiles with new optical guidance heads, allowing a terminal radar scan of bridge targets to correct for errors and improve strike accuracy in the final seconds of flight.

For civilians, the effects range from blacked-out neighborhoods and grid instability to hours lost in traffic as river crossings are knocked out or restricted. Utility crews in Ukraine face mounting danger: in Sumy region, a Russian FPV (first-person-view) drone struck an Ukrenergo vehicle, wounding three power company workers, one of them critically, according to local reports. Power engineers who restore lines after strikes have become recurring targets as Russia tries to prolong outages.

Both sides also continue to hit industrial and military-related facilities away from the capital. Russian reports claimed that a site in Poltava region used to assemble and store long-range Ukrainian drones was struck, along with an industrial facility in Hlobyne, also in Poltava, where separate footage showed damage after Geran drones hit. Ukraine, for its part, released combat video from special operations forces operating inside Russian territory, saying they conducted reconnaissance, route and logistics mining, and target designation for Ukrainian drones, resulting in four Russian soldiers killed and nine wounded in one episode.

The approach of the Abu Dhabi talks has not yet produced visible restraint. Instead, each new attack appears aimed at strengthening bargaining positions or demonstrating that critical pressure points remain exposed. Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who spoke with Vladimir Putin for 90 minutes, publicly questioned whether the Kremlin actually seeks peace, warning that if Putin had wanted an end to the war earlier, “the war would have ended.” His skepticism underlines why neither Ukrainian nor Western planners see diplomacy as a substitute for continued military pressure.

One lesson is becoming harder to ignore: infrastructure in this war is not collateral damage but a central battlefield, where power lines, bridges, refineries and logistics hubs are treated as levers to exhaust the adversary’s economy and morale.

The next inflection points will include how extensive repairs on Kyiv’s Northern Bridge turn out to be, whether the tempo of strikes on Ukraine’s grid increases as winter sets in, how quickly Russia brings the Kirishi refinery back online, and whether anything announced from Abu Dhabi signals limits on deep strikes—or, if talks stall, a further loosening of them.