Ukraine’s campaign to cripple Kremlin oil and gas production with relentless drone strikes chalked up another processing plant set ablaze on Sunday, with long-range robot aircraft scoring hits and touching off fiery explosions on the premises of a major condensate gas processing site near the Baltic Sea port city St. Petersburg.
Flying wing drones tipped with explosive warheads swooped down on the Ust-Luga facility, Russia’s main processing site for natural gas piped from the Arctic and West Siberia, during the morning work shift. Eyewitnesses reported at least two massive fires following the daylight attack.
The Gazprom-owned processing center facility is one of the largest natural gas processing plants in Europe and the main outlet for Russian natural gas exports by the Baltic Sea. According to Russian news reports, the local plant operator is an energy company called Novatek.
Video recorded by plant workers and placed on the internet shows precise hits on the site’s cryogenic gas condensate/gas unit and orange fireball explosions. Russian media reported the unit suffered substantial damage.
According to open sources, the Ust-Luga complex at full capacity can process up to 45 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually and from that produce 13 million tons of liquified natural gas (LNG), practically all of it for export. The site’s annual capacity also includes 3.6 million tons of ethane, 1.8 million tons of propane-butane, as well as naphtha, jet fuel, fuel oil, and gas oil for export. Repairs could take weeks to months, industry reports say.
The Ukrainian aircraft visibly concentrated on the site’s gas-processing equipment and no storage reservoirs were hit. Ukraine’s Army General Staff on Sunday evening took credit for the attack and called it successful. The official statement did not identify the exact type of aircraft used.
St. Petersburg’s main airport, Pulkovo was shut down most of Sunday with 39 flights canceled and 60 flights delayed, St. Petersburg media reported.
Regional governor Aleksandr Drozdenko in a mid-morning statement said that “falling debris” from 10 Ukrainian drones destroyed by Russian army air defense units deployed around the plant sparked a minor blaze that firefighters quickly brought under control.
Video of the strikes showed the Ukrainian drones flying low and slow and seemingly unimpeded by small arms fire from the ground, and at least two aircraft detonating after impacting on or near the base of the plant’s main gas processing tower.
Ukraine’s military in May announced it was fielding a new, flying-wing drone called a Batyar which in shape and size is similar to the silhouettes of attack aircraft recorded in the plant worker videos. The Batyar has a reported maximum 800-kilometer (500-mile) range and is rated to carry an 18-kilogram (40-pound) warhead. Ust-Luga is 700-750 kilometers (435-466 miles) from probable Ukrainian drone launch sites.
The Ukrainian military geolocation group Cyber Broshono in a Sunday evaluation of the Ust-Luga strike rated the scale of damage caused by the drone strikes and fires as “critical” and called the facility the “heart” of Russian natural gas processing for export.
“This… is a significant blow not only to Russia’s energy infrastructure, but also to its export potential and ambitions in the petrochemical sector,” that evaluation said in part.
Ukrainian energy market researcher Evhen Instrebin in Sunday X comments estimated each day the Ust-Luga plant is not operational the facility loses $12 million/day or almost $0.4 billion per month. The cost to Gazprom and Novotek to repair the damage was still unassessed, he said.
Ukraine in mid-2023 launched a campaign to degrade Russian economic capacity and energy exports earnings with long-range strikes targeting energy production, power grids and transportation infrastructure. In 2025 Kyiv’s bombardment effort intensified with more frequent attacks, increased numbers of drones used, and more effective penetration of Russian air defenses. Beginning in late July, strikes have taken place almost nightly with Russian oil and gas processing facilities the clear top priority target.
In an attack directly targeting Russian oil export earnings, Ukrainian drones on Thursday struck and set afire the Unecha crude oil pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline, the main land route by which Russian crude oil reaches European markets. This followed a strike on Monday, and a strike preceding that on Aug. 13. European Pleiades satellite imagery from Sunday showed major damage.
In the wake of the Unecha attacks Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – both leaders of downstream countries with no other source of crude oil but the Druzhba pipeline – accused Ukraine of waging economic warfare against their countries.
Both Orbán and Fico have aligned themselves with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russo-Ukrainian War and have suggested Ukraine should surrender to Russia in order to end the fighting. Both Slovakian and Hungarian representatives have vetoed Ukrainian support measures and sanctions on Russia proposed in the EU. Neither Fico nor Orbán support military assistance from their countries to Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha in a Sunday X comment said Kyiv regrets Hungary’s energy problem but noted that Budapest has had three years to diversify its economy away from Russian energy “like the rest of Europe.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Sunday comments to Kyiv media said that Ukraine considers Hungary “a friend” and said that Hungarian national energy policy was the sovereign responsibility of the Orbán regime.
Prior to Sunday, likely the single most damaging recent Ukrainian attack on Russian domestic fossil fuel processing capacity took place on Thursday, Aug. 21, in a strike hitting and setting ablaze the biggest oil refinery in the Russian Federation, near the Azov Sea port city Rostov. Fires were finally extinguished on Sunday afternoon. It is not clear when the site will be able to come back on line.
Russia’s petroleum troubles
Since early August Ukrainian drones have hit and forced partial or total shut downs of at least 10 major oil refineries in west and central Russia. Industry estimates of oil processing capacity taken off-line by the Ukrainian strikes range between 10-25 percent of all capacity in the Russian Federation.
The Kremlin has attempted to protect the domestic economy from price shocks drastically limiting wholesale fuel export volumes, and by imposing price ceilings for most grades of processed fuels like gasoline, diesel, and propane.
Hoarding, retail consumer concerns, reduced capacity, and damaged fuel transportation networks have conspired to undermine Kremlin attempts to keep fuel markets stable. Shortages, long queues at fuel stations and even total absence of fuel have been reported in some regional markets. Worst hit per Russian news reports have been the occupied Crimea and Luhansk regions, the Siberian territory Buryatia, and Russia’s Pacific Ocean coast.
A Friday fuel market report published by Instrebin found that actual retail prices for gasoline in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorskiy Krai region, are about 26 percent higher than “official maximum” prices allowed by the government.
Russian News reports from the Kuril region, a Russian-occupied island chain off the north coast of Japan, said that 92-octane gasoline had disappeared completely, because of supply chain bottlenecks. A statement by local officials said that a ship with more gasoline would reach the island chain soon.