Ukraine has struck a major Russian oil hub and a military airbase in one of its largest aerial attacks since the war began, with nearly 1,200 drones launched, according to the military in Kyiv.
The General Staff said the Samara linear production and dispatch station near the village of Prosvet was hit, with a massive fire breaking out in several oil storage reservoirs. The station receives fuel via pipelines from Tatarstan, Western Siberia and other regions before blending it to produce Urals oil, which accounts for up to half of Russia's oil exports.
Strike on military airbase
Alongside the Samara station, Ukraine confirmed a strike on the Lipetsk-2 military airbase, which hit buildings and ignited oil storage tanks. The attacks were confirmed in a statement issued on Friday.
"Urals accounts for up to half of all Russian oil exports. Therefore, every damaged tank in Samara strikes directly at the main source of money from which the aggressor pays for missiles, drones, and the war against Ukraine," the General Staff stated.
Recent strikes on Russian infrastructure
The attacks are the latest in a series of Ukrainian strikes on military and fuel infrastructure inside Russia. This week, massive fires were reported at the Kirishi Oil Refinery in the Leningrad region, near St Petersburg, after a strike by Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Vladimir Putin was 'losing the war' as a huge oil refinery burned after a "massive" drone strike on key infrastructure inside Russia. The Kamensky missile manufacturing plant in the Rostov region was hit overnight into November 1, and dramatic pictures appeared to show multiple fires at the Kstovo facility in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
Gleb Nikitin, governor of Nizhny Novgorod, confirmed a "massive drone attack" involving more than 100 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). "The intensity of the strikes is very high, and the Russians are seeking to maximally exploit the deficit of ballistic missile interceptors," he said in a message shared on Telegram. Russian officials said they had shot down 235 drones launched from Ukraine.
Zelensky said: "Russia is losing. We are holding our positions, liberating territory, and ensuring that every day of the war costs the aggressor as much as possible."
Peace talks and European involvement
The latest attacks come after US and Russian negotiators held talks aimed at ending the war. The Kremlin has revived its proposal from December 2021, the "draft treaties" with the US and Nato, which would have halted the alliance's eastward enlargement and rolled back Nato military infrastructure from central and eastern European countries that joined after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
This has alarmed European leaders. "Russia wants to talk about questions of European security architecture. We don't need to talk about that. There is one," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, referring to Nato.
After two days of talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi this week, US envoys briefed Putin in the Kremlin and Zelensky, who was in Dublin, Ireland, to meet European leaders. More talks are planned, according to US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
A team of diplomats from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the European Union will be sent to the talks, said European Council President Antonio Costa after a meeting in Dublin. Kushner, who is also Donald Trump's son-in-law, said Russia had agreed to include Europe in upcoming talks, after Moscow's long insistence that the continent's governments should be excluded because they supported Ukraine.
Europe's presence at the table will allow negotiators "to address the broader postwar European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia," Kushner said on X.
