Drones attacked Sterlitamak in Russia’s Bashkortostan on 29 October, and smoke rose over the Bashkir Soda Company, Russian Telegram channel Astra reported, citing its open-source analysis. The city’s mayor admitted debris fell on an unnamed plant.

Ukraine’s long-range drones keep reaching deeper into the industries that feed Russia’s war. In the past five days, a nitric acid maker in Tula Oblast, a rocket-fuel rubber plant in Samara Oblast, and a titanium plant in the Urals came under attack. The Sterlitamak plant lies about 1,310 km from the front line. Drones also attacked it on 27 August, Astra says. Ukraine has not commented.

The plant is Russia’s only maker of a compound for armor fibers

The Bashkir Soda Company is Russia’s largest producer of soda ash and baking soda, and part of the Roskhim chemical holding. It is also Russia’s only maker of terephthaloyl chloride, The Insider reported, citing the company’s website. The website also mentions deliveries to the defense industry.

The compound goes into aramid fibers, Kevlar-type materials used for body armor, helmets, and armor for military vehicles and aircraft, Astra said. Astra also says the company sits on the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry’s closed register of defense enterprises.

The attack began around dawn. Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ posted footage of a drone over the city. Supernova+, another Ukrainian monitoring channel, posted the plant’s coordinates and photos of smoke. Russia’s aviation agency restricted flights at the airport of Ufa, the region’s capital. Pro-Ukrainian X account Maks 26 shared footage of the attacks on Sterlitamak and Luhansk. It also suggested that Sterlitamak’s Syntez-Kauchuk rubber plant may have been the target, and claimed a fire at the Marinovka air base in Volgograd Oblast.

After the attack by Ukrainian drones, a fire was recorded in the area of ​​the Marinovka military airfield in the Volgograd region.

The Defense Forces also attacked Bashkortostan. Bashkir Soda Company in Sterlitamak or Syntez-Kauchuk JSC could have been hit.

In… pic.twitter.com/SIJ1vR8395

— MAKS 26 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) October 29, 2026

Mayor Emil Shaimardanov claimed air defenses downed all seven drones over the city. An earlier version of his post, quoted by Russian state news agency TASS, said eight.

“Debris fell on the territory of one of the enterprises. Minor damage was caused, the plant is operating normally,” Shaimardanov claimed.

He did not name the plant.

The Insider said NASA’s FIRMS fire map confirmed a fire at the plant. But the map shows only the weak heat source its satellites record there almost every night, the last time hours before the drones came, and nothing new after the attack.

Moscow and other regions under attack

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed that 613 drones flew toward the Moscow region overnight, that most were downed on the far approaches, and that 231 were downed on approach to the capital. Russia’s aviation agency restricted flights at Vnukovo, Domodedovo, and Zhukovsky airports. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it downed 1,214 drones over 19 regions overnight.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces hit a depot of Geran drones, Russia’s version of the Iranian Shahed, along with a drone launch site and a fuel depot near Navlya in Bryansk Oblast, about 70 km from the Ukrainian border. The Atesh partisan movement reported a loud explosion near Oryol’s airfield and a large fire in Lipetsk, about 285 km from the border.

Explosions in occupied Crimea, power cuts in occupied Luhansk

Subscribers of Crimean monitoring channel Krymsky Veter reported drones and then a strong explosion with Russian air defenses firing in Krasnoperekopsk, in occupied Crimea, about 95 km from the front line.

In occupied Luhansk, about 105 km from the front line, residents reported another attack on Lugacom, the occupation’s mobile operator, and internet outages followed, Exilenova+ said. The channel named only Lugacom. The operator sits in the seized Ukrtelecom building. Exilenova+ also posted footage of a fire in the city.

pic.twitter.com/Pihyr8Y0EL

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 29, 2026

Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-installed head of the occupied part of Luhansk Oblast, claimed that 150,000 customers in six municipalities lost power after attacks on energy facilities.

The coordinating committee of the Federation of Environmental Organisations of Cyprus (Opok) supported the residents of Mitsero who oppose the setting up of an asphalt production plant in an area close to the village.

Opok said that as the area already hosted quarries, livestock farms, slaughterhouses and waste treatment activities, the addition of a new unit would intensify concerns about the quality of the air, protection of nature and the daily life of residents. It said that “the dust from the quarries, the bad smells, the emissions of production and the movement of heavy trucks should be evaluated together as the residents experience all these pressures simultaneously.”

Residents, supported by environmental groups, have been fighting against the establishment of the asphalt plant for years. In September 2023 they won a legal battle against the government, with the administrative court cancelling the permit for an asphalt plant, but that was not the end of the matter. In June this year, an application for an interim order to suspend the work on the asphalt plant, pending an appeal against the issuing of a planning permit, was rejected. The supreme court will now issue a decision on the validity of the planning permit.

Campaigners are demanding that an independent environmental impact study is carried out and an assessment of the effect on people’s health. They argue that because of the presence of other industries in the area, there is a cumulative environmental impact and that this puts the health of residents at risk. It should be noted that the asphalt plant had been operating near Dhali village and the decision to relocate it was taken after protests by the residents of the surrounding area.

As a result, the authorities are on shaky ground. If the plant was moved away from the Dhali area because of people’s protests, why should people living in Mitsero and surrounding villages (residents of several nearby villages are fighting against the plant’s relocation) accept it in their area? It probably will not be situated as close to the residential areas as it was in Dhali, but this will not reassure people.

The question is whether the plant will have all the necessary anti-pollution mechanisms to ensure it does not pollute the air of the area. We assume that no planning permit would have been issued by the authorities without all anti-pollution requirements satisfied and if this is the case, the residents’ protests would be unjustified. In fact, this is what Opok and other environmental groups should be campaigning for instead of mindlessly opposing the operation of any industry. Opok is essentially arguing that there should be no asphalt plant anywhere in Cyprus which is absurd.

What residents and green campaigners should be calling for is the enforcement of strict anti-pollution regulations at all factories and plants where they are not in place, because the country cannot function without industry