Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara Oblast with FP-1 drones early on 30 October, Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said, adding that one of the units hit hydrotreats diesel fuel. The strike came hours after WSJ reported that Ukraine had paused strikes on Russian refineries under pressure from US President Donald Trump until after the US midterm elections on 3 November.

Russia is pounding Ukraine's power grid and cities ahead of winter, with a mounting civilian toll, including 14 people killed on a Dnipro railway platform on 29 October. Ukraine's long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries, one of its most effective operations against Moscow, target the oil money that pays for that war. Trump has pressed Kyiv for weeks to stop them, blaming them for high global fuel prices, and Ukraine went quiet without saying so and without getting what it asked for in return, WSJ reported. The Samara strike is the first on Russian oil since then. Kyiv has not said whether the pause is over.

Fires spread across a refinery that makes jet fuel for Russia's military

Residents of Novokuibyshevsk reported drones, explosions, and a fire before dawn. Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ posted the first photos on Telegram at 05:24 Kyiv time, and Russian Telegram channel Astra geolocated the fire to the refinery, citing its open-source analysis of residents' photos.

Novokuybyshevsk, Samara region: locals report an attack and a fire. pic.twitter.com/9UEgqmkAOU

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 30, 2026

By morning, Exilenova+ counted at least 11 separate fires at the refinery. Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said air defense and mobile fire groups were repelling an attack, Astra reported. The region had declared a drone alert and closed its airport.

Fire Point said its FP-1 drones scored numerous hits on the refinery grounds, and that one of the units hit hydrotreats diesel fuel. The footage published so far shows several smoke columns over the plant but does not show which units burned. The Rosneft-owned refinery has a design capacity of 8.8 million tons of oil a year and is one of the main producers of jet fuel, according to its website. Astra says it supplies jet fuel to Russia's military. The plant lies about 910 km from the front line. Ukraine's General Staff has not commented.

pic.twitter.com/Ku6KRCKJ6v

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 30, 2026

Ukrainian drones have hit the plant before. Ukraine's military said its forces hit it in August and caused a fire.

It is the first fire at a Russian refinery since 15 October, when Ryazan's governor reported one at the city's refinery. It is also the first reported strike on Russia's oil industry since 20 October, when Ukrainian drones hit a Druzhba pipeline pumping station in Tambov Oblast. WSJ called that strike the last before the pause.

WSJ claims: Ukraine paused refinery strikes until after the US midterms

Ukraine's military paused its strikes on Russian refineries after weeks of pressure from Trump shook Kyiv's confidence in US support, people with knowledge of the operations told WSJ. The unofficial pause began early last week and is expected to last until after the midterms, and possibly deeper into November. Units carrying out long-range strikes were told in mid-October that the refinery campaign was effectively on hold once missions already under way were completed, two military officials said. Hours after the report, the Novokuibyshevsk strike called that account into question.

Ukraine's government has not announced a pause. Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on 27 October that “our guys tried to be a little more careful during these days. But they do not have an order” not to hit refineries, according to WSJ. He said drone units were hitting other kinds of targets in Russia.

Trump's envoy Jared Kushner repeated the demand to stop the strikes at a meeting with Zelenskyy in Oslo on 20 October, two US officials told WSJ. One of them called the conversation “very tough.” Kushner, who joined remotely, said he and envoy Steve Witkoff were spending a lot of time, energy, and jet fuel on mediating with Moscow, and that a 30-day pause on refineries would be a way for Ukraine to show gratitude, the official said.

Zelenskyy had asked for something in return, WSJ reported: a mutual energy ceasefire with Russia, Patriot missiles for Ukraine's grid, or permission to use Starlink inside Russia so drones could destroy Russian missile launchers. None of those ideas got far. Some of Kyiv's European backers also nudged Zelenskyy to pause until after the midterms, a senior European official said.

The pause showed in Russia's oil industry. Russian refinery utilization at the end of October was 25% higher than at the start of the month as drone attacks subsided, Reuters reported, according to The Moscow Times.

Russia claims over 1,000 drones for a second night as Moscow's airports close again

Russia's Defense Ministry said it downed 1,043 Ukrainian drones overnight over 19 regions, including Samara Oblast, the Moscow region, and Tatarstan. The night before, it claimed 1,214.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin stated that 862 drones flew toward the Moscow region between 20:30 on 29 October and 07:30 on 30 October, that most were downed on the far approaches, and that 170 were downed on approach to the capital. Russia's aviation agency restricted flights at all four Moscow airports, Astra reported. A day earlier, more than 460 flights were delayed or canceled at Moscow and St. Petersburg airports, Astra counted.

In Starodub, in Russia's Bryansk Oblast, about 35 km from the Ukrainian border, a building of the Konservsushprod plant, which makes canned food for the Russian army, appeared to be on fire in readers' photos and videos, Astra reported, saying the plant was presumably attacked and that its open-source analyst had not verified the footage. The Atesh partisan movement reported a blast in Aleksandrovka in Rostov Oblast, and air defense fire and an explosion in Orel.

Russian tech giant Yandex's data center in Sasovo burned out from the inside, a Ukrainian OSINT analyst wrote on 22 October. On cloud-free satellite images, he saw almost no significant holes in its roof. Ukrainian drones hit the site overnight on 8 October.

Sasovo was the first strike on a data center in Russia. It came two weeks after Russia destroyed data centers in Kyiv. Drones then hit Yandex sites in Vladimir and Kaluga, a Sber data center, and a VK data center near St. Petersburg, which VK acknowledged. In occupied Donbas, monitoring channels reported hits on buildings housing telecom operators.

What the analyst sees

The analyst, who goes by Harbuz, runs the Ukrainian OSINT channel Dnipro Osint. His roof reading comes from the images. His interior claim comes from what he called available information: he wrote that a fire broke out inside and put part of the equipment out of action.

In an earlier post, Harbuz wrote that a third of the data center had burned out. In the new one, he writes that the building burned out from the inside. He does not say whether he revised the earlier figure.

Russian outlet Agentstvo studied Airbus images from 12 October. It found damage on about a third of the building. Unlike Harbuz, though, Agentstvo described a blackened western roof with damage resembling holes.

What Yandex says

On 8 October, Yandex stated that the attack caused a fire and forced it to suspend operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Reuters reported. Yandex Cloud and the Disk and Documents services that run on it ran with major disruptions that morning, Russian outlet The Bell reported.

Later that day, the company stated: "The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed. For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is possible to restore the data centre equipment in Sasovo." Two of Yandex's three supercomputers, used to develop its AI model, are housed there.

The same day, journalists asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy whether Ukraine was targeting Russian data centers. He did not refer specifically to the Yandex strike, Reuters noted, but said: "We always respond in mirror-like fashion."

Ukrainian drones struck St. Petersburg’s oil terminal, a fuel depot, an Ozon distribution center, and a VK data center overnight, setting off fires across the city, monitoring channels reported. Russian outlet Meduza called it apparently the largest attack on the city and Leningrad Oblast since the war began. Russian officials acknowledged fires, damaged homes and substations, and power cuts.

Russia keeps fighting along the front while bombarding Ukrainian cities and the grid behind it. Ukraine’s long-range drones, in turn, target the oil exports and logistics that fund and supply that war, and Russia’s Baltic oil ports have been hit repeatedly this year. St. Petersburg is a symbolic place: Russia’s so-called second capital and Putin’s hometown.

Oil terminal and fuel depot on fire

Ukrainian forces struck the Petersburg Oil Terminal with FP-1 drones, starting a fire, Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said. The company described the terminal as one of the region’s largest, handling 12.5 million tonnes of petroleum products a year, including for export.

Piter port and oil facility in one shot pic.twitter.com/KfptwkhsDS

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 18, 2026

St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Beglov acknowledged fires at the terminal and in four city districts, adding that Pulkovo airport had restricted flights. By morning, firefighters were still battling blazes at the terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, and industrial warehouses in the Kolpinsky district, he wrote. He claimed one person was killed and five injured. Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported that the Ruchyi depot had been burning since the night.

Ozon hub, VK data center, and a bridge

An Ozon distribution center in Kolpinsky district caught fire after the attack, the company said, Russian independent outlet Astra reported. Astra’s open-source intelligence analyst described it as one of Ozon’s busiest fulfillment centers in northwestern Russia, covering up to 79,000 m².

Ozon in St. Peterburg pic.twitter.com/tA9iwRJf7d

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 18, 2026

FP-1 drones also hit a VK data center in Novosergiyevka, Leningrad Oblast, causing serious damage, Fire Point said. VK acknowledged a drone attack on the site but claimed its services were working normally. Leningrad Oblast Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko claimed air defenses downed 145 drones over the oblast alone. He acknowledged damage to the data center’s transformer equipment and warehouse complex, and minor damage to the Vostochnaya substation. Two other substations in Yanino went offline, cutting power to about 20,000 people, he said.

A drone also hit the cable-stayed bridge over the Korabelny fairway, part of a toll highway linking the city’s north and south, Exilenova+ reported, adding that the extent of the damage was still being clarified. The channel also reported a fire near a Russian Aerospace Forces radar company outside the village of Kaporskoye.

To reach St. Petersburg, Ukrainian drones had to cover 1,000 km across four Russian regions guarded by air defenses and electronic warfare, said Serhii Beskrestnov, adviser to Ukraine’s president on defense technology.

“And these are not cruise missiles with special systems, these are drones that fly at speeds of up to 200 km/h,” he wrote.

Strikes resume after a one-sided truce

The same night, Russia hit Ukraine’s grid again, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy counted 76 Russian strikes on energy since the ceasefire was announced. US President Donald Trump declared the truce on 11 October. Ukraine paused its refinery strikes for three days at Washington’s request, but Russia struck a Kharkiv power plant within hours and kept hitting the grid. Zelenskyy then said Ukraine was resuming strikes on Russian oil and would stop again only in exchange for more US interceptors for its Patriot systems. Trump called the renewed strikes “a disgrace” and said he found Zelenskyy “more difficult to deal with than Putin.”

Ukraine has hit the St. Petersburg area before. In July, drones set fire to Wildberries warehouses near the city. In August, Ukraine began striking Ozon hubs, starting in Samara Oblast. The hubs move dual-use goods such as electronics and drone components.