Drones Hit Russian Oil Facility 1500 km From Border in First-Ever Kirov Region Attack

Unidentified drones targeted a fuel storage facility in the city of Kotelnich, Kirov region, Russia, approximately 1500 km from the Ukrainian border, according to several Russian media outlets on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

“A few minutes ago, a drone strike hit Kotelnich. The drone attacked a fuel storage tank,” reported the governor of the Russian region, Alexander Sokolov.

According to him, the fire was contained, and there were no casualties. The governor, as usual, assured that “the situation is under control.”

According to the Russian Telegram channel Baza, preliminary reports indicate that drones attacked a fuel storage facility at the “Vyatka” plant in Kotelnich. Baza reports that there were three drones in total, and after one of them hit, one of the tanks caught fire. Two drones attacked the fuel storage facility at the Vyatka plant: one struck the tank lid, and the second hit an empty tank.

There is no official confirmation of this information yet. However, Baza published a video allegedly showing the moment of the strike, where a fire can be seen starting.

The Russian state media outlet TASS reports that there were five drone strikes in the area, but residents in chat groups mention six strikes. This is the first drone attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kirov region since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

Kyiv Post reached out to its sources in Ukrainian intelligence, but no response was received at the time of publication.

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The Kirov region, located near Kazan, where Russian authorities temporarily closed the airport on the morning of Aug. 28 due to a drone attack, is approximately 1500 km from the Ukrainian border.

Kyiv Post’s sources in HUR reported that in the early hours of Wednesday, August 28, Ukrainian-made drones from the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) and Special Operations Forces (SOF) attacked the FDKU “Atlas” oil depot, managed by the Federal Agency for State Reserves of Russia, near Kamensk-Shakhtinsky in the Rostov region of Russia.

The attacked facility is part of the Russian military-industrial complex and is a crucial link in supplying fuel to Russian occupation forces.

Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil depots a have been a crucial part of an ongoing strategy to weaken Russia’s petroleum sector, its main economic asset.