Ukraine carried out a sweeping overnight drone offensive deep inside Russia on Friday, setting an oil refinery ablaze in Perm — roughly 1,500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border — and damaging an electronics plant in Ulyanovsk and an industrial facility in Voronezh, in one of the most geographically dispersed long-range strikes of the war.
Eyewitnesses reported a major fire at the Perm refinery after a Ukrainian attack drone slammed into the facility early on Friday morning, according to EA WorldView. The strike on Perm, in the Urals, pushes the range of Ukraine's deep-strike campaign further into territory the Kremlin long considered untouchable. Russian authorities have not commented on the refinery fire.
In the Ulyanovsk region, Governor Alexei Russkikh said on Telegram that eight people, including a child, were injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Friday morning, with industrial and civilian infrastructure damaged. One of the targets was the Iskra electronics plant in the city of Ulyanovsk, which manufactures components for communications and radio technology — a facility roughly 700 kilometres east-southeast of Moscow with direct relevance to Russia's military supply chain.
Perm: a refinery burning 1,500 km from the front
Perm region Governor Dmitry Makhonin said air defence units and mobile fire groups were repelling what he called a "massive" drone attack on the region overnight, confirming an industrial facility had been targeted. He reported no preliminary casualties, with emergency services working at the scene.
Footage circulating online showed a Ukrainian attack drone striking the refinery before dawn, followed by a large fire, according to open-source accounts. Reuters could not independently verify the reports, and Moscow has offered no official statement on the extent of the damage.
The Perm strike follows a pattern of escalating Ukrainian reach: recent weeks have seen drone attacks on the Kapotnya refinery near Moscow, a record-setting strike on a gas facility near Novy Urengoy some 3,000 kilometres away, and repeated hits on refineries in Samara, Ufa and Kuibyshev. Each attack compounds the pressure on Russia's fuel production and distribution at a moment when domestic fuel shortages are already biting.
Voronezh and Belgorod under the same barrage
The same overnight wave hit regions closer to the border. Voronezh Governor Alexander Gusev said air defence forces destroyed 88 drones overnight over the regional capital and at least six districts, with four people injured and residential buildings, vehicles and industrial facilities damaged. A synthetic rubber manufacturing plant in the city of Voronezh — more than 500 kilometres south of Moscow — was damaged in the attack, according to EA WorldView.
In the Belgorod region, one civilian was killed and another wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a truck overnight, the regional operational headquarters said. As with all Russian official statements on the strikes, these claims could not be independently verified.
The fuel war tightens
The overnight offensive is the latest turn in Ukraine's systematic campaign against Russian energy and military-industrial infrastructure — a strategy Kyiv has pursued with growing intensity through 2026 as its long-range drone arsenal matured.
Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service said this week that Russia is "under more pressure than at any other point during the war", citing sustained Ukrainian long-range strikes causing extensive damage inside Russia, heavy Russian losses for marginal territorial gains, and an economy nearing crisis amid military spending and sanctions. Ukrainian officials argue that every refinery taken offline translates directly into fewer tanks, jets and trucks the Kremlin can field — and that the revenue war is now as decisive as the battlefield one.
Moscow has responded to the refinery campaign by expanding its own strikes on Ukrainian energy and industrial targets, including drone-plant facilities in Kyiv and shipping infrastructure around Odesa this week. But the geography of this war has shifted: with drones now reaching Perm, Ulyanovsk and Voronezh in a single night, there is increasingly no part of European Russia that Ukrainian planners cannot put under threat.
Conclusion
Friday's strikes demonstrate that Ukraine's deep-strike capability is no longer measured in isolated record flights but in sustained, multi-target operations across the breadth of Russia. As the refinery war grinds on, the question for the Kremlin is not whether its fuel infrastructure is safe, but how much of it can be kept running while the drones keep coming.
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