Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots and ground crews on Thursday, Aug. 21, launched a new round of nighttime drone strikes against Kremlin assets hundreds of kilometers behind the fighting front, in one attack scoring multiple hits on a base belonging to Russia’s army intelligence agency – the GRU.

Attack on GRU compound in Crimea

Kyiv Post image showing reported location of a GRU Russian military intelligence base in the occupied Crimea peninsula to the west of the city of Sevastopol, and fires observed on Thursday in the vicinity of that base by NASA’s FIRMS fire-watch satellite network. Atesh, the main Ukrainian partisan group operating in Crimea, identified the site in 2024.

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The air raid, by a reported 10-15 unmanned aircraft, per local news reports, attacked a GRU compound adjacent to a military airport in the port city of Sevastopol, in the Russian-occupied Crimea region.

Taken over by the Russian military in 2014, Sevastopol is 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the nearest probable safe sites for a Ukrainian drone launch.

Crimean news feeds and social media reported air defense units in the vicinity firing and two heavy ground explosions within the premises of a closed facility reportedly used by Russian military intelligence operatives. Ukrainian media in 2024, citing pro-Ukraine partisans in Crimea, reported an elite Russian naval reconnaissance unit with the identifier number 95408 being based at the site.

Other Topics of Interest Counter-Counterattacks, Hungarian Humor, Duking It Out at Long Range Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post’s military correspondent, shares his perspective on recent developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Moscow-appointed head of the Russian occupation authority in Crimea, in a post placed on his official Telegram channel, confirmed “loud sounds” had been heard in the vicinity of the base and a fire had broken out, adding that emergency responders were en route. Authorities have the situation under control and Sevastopol residents should remain calm, he said.

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Most Crimean social media on Thursday posted video and audio seeming to document an actual hit, by that content showing a single heavy explosion with orange flames lighting up the horizon. Still images showed possible ground fires. Russian air defense engagements of unidentified aircraft were reported flying over the Crimean cities of Feodosia and Dzhankoi, each 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Sevastopol.

Some pro-Russia milbloggers claimed the Sevastopol strike was a training exercise.

The NASA-operated world fire watch satellite network FIRMS, showed a hot spot consistent with a major fire covering about 2 square kilometers (0.8 square miles) of ground at the south end of the runway. Other satellite images showed office and storage buildings in the center of the hot spot.

Oil refinery attack in Rostov

Russian oil refinery in the Rostov region burns following a Ukrainian drone strike on Thursday. Screen grabs taken from Russian social media published by Ukraine’s General Staff. Kyiv Post image.

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Russia’s mainland region Rostov, a Black Sea shore territory, was the target of a second Ukrainian drone swarm on Thursday, with both official and social media sources reporting aircraft targeting a major oil refinery near the town of Novoshakhtinsk.

Some Ukrainian milbloggers claimed rare jet-propelled drones had made the attack, hitting some 170-180 kilometers (106-111 miles) east of the fighting front, but there was no local confirmation. Ukraine’s General Staff, in a Thursday statement, credited the elite 14th Unmanned Aircraft Regiment for flying the Thursday strike.

Rostov region news platforms reported at least a single ground strike and, after sunrise, showed a single black smoke cloud reaching into the sky for kilometers. Images purportedly recording shortly after the drones struck showed multiple fires burning on the refinery premises.

Ukrainian milbloggers reported two Russian Pantsir short-range air defense systems and one medium-range Tor air defense system deployed to protect the refinery engaged but missed the incoming drones. NASA satellites showed major fires covering about 4 square kilometers (1.5 square miles) in the western half of the refinery premises.

The Novoshakhtinsk plant has a reported capacity of processing 5-7.5 million tons of oil into fuel oil, heating oil, marine and diesel fuel, and straight-run gasoline. Located near Ukraine’s eastern border, the refinery was first attacked by Ukrainian drones in June 2022. Before the Thursday strike, the most recent round of Ukrainian strikes against the plant was on Aug. 16 and 17.

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Ukrainian strike planners since early August appear to have opened a campaign targeting Russian fuel processing capacity. By mid-August, fuel shortages and price spikes had been reported in some parts of Russia, and gas stations with no more fuel to sell in a few cities.

In the hours following the strikes, two NATO reconnaissance aircraft were visible operating in the vicinity of Crimea, according to open-source flight tracking platforms. One was a Turkish Air Force Bombardier maritime patrol plane flying a track between the Bulgarian and north Turkish coasts.

A US Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance plane orbits in international airspace 90-100 kilometers (56-62 miles) offshore from the major Russian naval base at Novorossiysk, and about 100-110 kilometers (62-68 miles) from Russia’s sensitive Kerch bridge connecting occupied Crimea with the Russian mainland. The US air patrol was in progress about eight hours after Ukrainian drones attacked the Russia-occupied city Sevastopol. Kyiv Post combined image from FlightRadar map.

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The second was a US Navy Poseidon naval reconnaissance airplane approaching to about 100-110 kilometers from the Crimean coast, and 90-100 kilometers (56-62 miles) from the Russian mainland and the important Russian Black Sea naval base at Novorossiysk.

The Kremlin has accused NATO of passing data collected by Black Sea air patrols to Ukraine’s military for targeting purposes. NATO officials have stated the alliance is not an active participant in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Railroad infrastructure strike in Voronezh

A third covey of Ukrainian long-range drones hit and damaged railroad power transmission infrastructure in Russia’s western Voronezh region. The overnight strikes hitting in and around a transformer station near the village of Zhuravka. The facility’s main function is delivering electricity to the regional rail network. Local news platforms reported damage to a transformer station and delays to 19 trains transiting the Voronezh region rail network.

According to Ukrainian news media, the Thursday strike was the 17th attack of the war by Ukrainian drone forces against Zhuravka station.

Ukraine’s long-range drone strike planners in July kicked off a campaign targeting both Russian railroad infrastructure and individual trains, particularly in southwest Russia. The likely objectives of those attacks, still ongoing, are to degrade Russian military transport capacity and to inconvenience Russian travelers moving between central and northern Russia, and the relatively warm Black Sea coast resort region.

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Russian Defense Ministry statement

According to a Russian Defense Ministry statement, Russian air defenses on the night shot down 49 Ukrainian drones, including 21 over the Rostov region, seven over the Voronezh region, and four over Russian-occupied Crimean territory. That official statement reported a fire linked to a drone shoot down in the Rostov region, and damage to power grid infrastructure in the Voronezh region.

In Russia’s Krasny Sulin, water supplies have been completely cut off. Russian authorities redirected resources to fill firefighting reservoirs to battle a blaze at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery, Russian media reports.

Residents have been promised water deliveries “upon request.” Service will resume only after pressure testing of the network and once reservoirs are fully refilled.

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Utility officials in Russia’s Rostov region said the cutoff was necessary because additional water was needed to contain the refinery fire. The blaze has been burning for three days after a drone strike and has not yet been brought under control.

Regional Housing and Utilities Minister Antonina Pshenichnaya said water supply will be restored only once reservoirs reach the required level and testing is complete.

Locals were offered a delivery system to request water. In comments under the minister’s post on Telegram, many expressed anger. Some called for Novoshakhtinsk to be cut off instead, while others complained of long-standing problems with low water pressure.

Since August 21, water pressure in Novoshakhtinsk has already been reduced to fill firefighting tanks after the first strike on the refinery. At that time, residents were warned about “low pressure” and asked to accept the restrictions.

Novoshakhtinsk Mayor Sergei Bondarenko said firefighting efforts remain difficult. He advised residents to go outside less often, keep windows closed at night, wear masks, and seal cracks with a wet cloth.

On March 21, the Rostov region came under drone attack. In Rostov-on-Don, two apartment buildings were struck.

Ukraine’s ongoing long-range bombardment of Russia expanded recently to target – and repeatedly torch – oil refineries and trains carrying fuel in the south and west of the country.

The strikes, at times employing dozens of kamikaze drones against individual facilities kicked off in early August. By all accounts these have cut deeply into production capacity, spiking Russian gas pump and wholesale fuel prices.

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Kyiv’s most recent air raid against Russia’s energy infrastructure came during the early hours of Tuesday, with a reported 10-20 Ukrainian Liuytiy drones breaking through local air defenses to hit a railroad switching yard in the village of Tatsinskaya, in Russia’s south-western Rostov region.

Local social media reported scattered small arms fire as the drones approached, followed by multiple ground explosions. Video showed showed station buildings and a train with fuel cars burning fiercely, with flames reaching at least 20 meters (65 feet) into the sky.

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The Tatsinskaya strike came on the heels of an Aug. 2-3 drone raid against an oil production and storage site operated by the major Russian energy corporation Rosneft in the Black Sea resort city of Adler. Over 20 ground explosions were reported, along with images of massive reservoir fires that caused the nearby Sochi International Airport to be temporarily shut down.

On Aug. 1-2 Ukraine launched one of the most ambitious and wide-reaching drone attacks against Russia of the entire war, reportedly pushing more than 100 strike aircraft deep into Russian air space.

Other Topics of Interest Counter-Counterattacks, Hungarian Humor, Duking It Out at Long Range Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post’s military correspondent, shares his perspective on recent developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

One strike package hit the Ryazan Oil Refinery, south-east of Moscow and some 500 kilometers (312 miles) from Ukraine-controlled territory, resulting in a major fire – which local shrugged off as minor damage from a downed drone.

According to Ukrainian sources, the giant Ryazan facility is Russia’s fourth largest refinery and produces about six percent of all of its refined fossil fuel.

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The same night Ukrainian kamikaze drones hit the Novokuibyshevsk Oil Refinery, near the city of Samara, some 900 kilometers (560 miles) from the frontline. Multiple ground strikes were reported and local residents recorded mushroom cloud explosions following hits. One civilian died from falling debris, and authorities ordered a shut-down of local mobile internet connections and operations at Samara airport.

A Sunday announcement by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces identified the elite 14th Separate Unmanned Aircraft Regiment as responsible for Sunday’s strikes. They claimed long-range drones also hit and damaged the Annanefteprodukt fuel storage facility near the Russian city Voronezh the same night.

Battle damage assessments were in progress but hindered by another shut-down of the mobile internet by local authorities, which prevented local civilians from uploading images of the results and inhibited the ability of Ukrainian army intelligence to review the outcome.

Russia’s alternative “assessment”

In contrast to Ukrainian claims and the evidence on social media, RTussian authorities continue to downplay the effects of Ukrainian drone strikes.

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On the night of Aug.1-2 the Russian Defense Ministry claimed 112 Ukrainian drones were shot down causing only minor damage from falling debris at “limited” but unspecified locations.

However, Ukrainian news platforms and NASA’s FIRM world fire watch network showed a massive fire on the premises of an oil refinery near the town of Kstovo in Russia’s Nizhegorodskiy region – its Governor said air defenses repelled the attack.

The widely-read Russian business magazine Kommersant in a Monday article reported that industry experts had estimated that Ukrainian strikes over the previous 72 hours had cut Russian fuel production by as much as 40,000 tons a day. AS a result the wholesale price of A-95 gasoline rose to a new high of 77,000 rubles ($932) per metric ton – breaking September 2023’s previous record.

The independent Russian news agency SOTA also reported parallel price spikes for diesel and lower-octane gasoline on Monday, predicting prices were likely to continue to rise because about half of the Ryazan oil refinery capacity was off-line, and the Novokuibyshevsk facility, producing 2-2.5 percent of all of Russia’s refined energy products, was completely shut down.

In a bid to prevent domestic fuel price inflation, the Russian government announced a ban on gasoline exports for most producers to run from July 30 to August 31, which could be extended until the end of September, Kommersant said.

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Kommersant also said that repairs to damaged facilities could take as much as six months although previously, following past Ukrainian attacks, production volumes restarted more quickly. Open sources say Ukrainian strikes had hit and damaged the Ryazan facility at least five times prior to the Sunday attack – in March and May 2024, in January (twice) and again in February 2025.

The flurry of Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy production capacity has come against a background of threatened US sanctions against Russian energy buyers China and India, potentially to be put into effect on Aug. 7. In another move that potentially threatens Russia’s worldwide market share, the oil exporting cartel OPEC announced on Monday it would increase production by 547,000 barrels per day, effective from September.

It’s not just energy

Ukrainian bombardment of Russian refineries and fuel car trains has been paralleled by a strike campaign taking on a smorgasbord of targets including arms production facilities, air defense systems, air bases and ammunition storage sites. In late July Kyiv’s top priority based on the number of attacks was railroad infrastructure in south-west Russia.

Along with the Tatsinskaya strike, Tuesday saw at least one Ukrainian drone detonate on the territory of the Stara Stanitsa electric traction substation, a railroad facility in the Rostov region. Local social media reported multiple ground explosions and published images geo-located showing the station’s power transformer ablaze. Acting Rostov region Governor Yuri Slyusar said in a statement that “falling debris” from a shot-down drone caused a fire and reassured voters authorities had brought the fire under control.

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The NASA-run FIRMS world satellite watch system showed a major fire burning in the vicinity of the substation. Later on Tuesday, the main electricity utility company for Russia’s Rostov region, Donenergo, announced that a “technical violation of the energy transmission network had caused a partial disconnection of customers.”

During the ambitious Saturday air raids, aside from energy infrastructure, Ukrainian drones knocked out a major air defense radar in Russian-occupied Crimea, hit an airfield warehouse near the town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk, attacked a railroad traction substation and electricity transformers in a town nearby, and drones crashed into two military electronics factories in the city of Penza deep inside Russia.

Probably the most spectacular Ukrainian drone raid in the past week took place overnight on Aug. 3-4, when UAV struck the Saky airbase in Crimea which, according to open sources, destroyed a Russian Air Force Su-30SM fighter jet and damaged another on the ground. The Ukrainian military claimed as many as three Su-24 aircraft at the base had also been damaged or destroyed, along with a stockpile of aviation munitions.

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The official Russian statement said the Saky strike caused limited damage and accused Kyiv of intentionally attacking civilian targets.

At least three people are killed in several regions of Russia while fire breaks out at an oil refinery in central Russia after it was hit.

Ukrainian drone strikes have killed at least three people and wounded two others overnight in western Russia, regional governors said, as a fire broke out at an oil refinery in central Russia after it was hit.

One woman was killed and two others wounded in an attack on an enterprise in Penza, the region’s governor, Oleg Melnichenko, wrote on Telegram on Saturday.

The second death of an elderly man happened inside a house that caught fire due to falling drone debris in the Samara region, Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev posted on Telegram.

In the Rostov region, a guard at an industrial facility was killed after a drone attack and a fire in one of the site’s buildings, acting Rostov Governor Yury Slyusar said. “The military repelled a massive air attack during the night,” destroying drones over seven districts, Slyusar posted on Telegram.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said it struck Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery on Saturday, causing a fire on its territory.

In a statement on Telegram, the Unmanned Systems Forces also said they hit the Annanefteprodukt oil storage facility in the Voronezh region. The statement did not specify how the facilities were hit, but Ukraine’s military specialises in drone warfare, including long-range strikes.

Separately, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said its drones had hit Russia’s Primorsko-Akhtarsk military airfield, which has been used to launch waves of long-range drones at targets in Ukraine.

The SBU said it also hit a factory in Penza that it said supplies Russia’s military-industrial complex with electronics.

At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine had no response to Moscow’s vast long-range strike capacity but it has since built up a fleet of long-range kamikaze drones able to carry explosive warheads for many hundreds of kilometres (miles).

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Russia’s Defence Ministry said in its daily report that its defence units had downed a total of 338 Ukrainian drones overnight.

In Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, overnight Russian drone attacks also left three people wounded, Governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram. Several buildings, homes and cars were damaged, he added.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces captured the village of Oleksandro-Kalynove in the Donetsk region on Saturday. Russian forces now control almost 20 percent of Ukraine in its east and south after three and a half years of the grinding war.

Kyiv, however, denies any Russian presence in the Dnipropetrovsk area.

Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid said that while there have been indications of a ceasefire in the past, the situation on the ground remains the same.

“As tensions escalate, it appears that diplomacy will be a possible way out,” he said, adding that the United States’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkofff, who has close relations with Russian officials, is expected in Moscow soon to negotiate a truce.

US President Donald Trump on Friday said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “the appropriate regions” in response to remarks from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries.

The US has been trying to negotiate a truce but so far, Kyiv and Moscow have mainly engaged in prisoner exchanges.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said only Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could end the war and renewed his call for a meeting between the two leaders.

“Ukraine calls for moving beyond the exchange of statements and technical-level meetings to talks between leaders. The United States has proposed this. Ukraine has supported it,” he said on X.

“What is needed is Russia’s readiness,” he added.

Putin, who has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire in the more than three-year conflict, said on Friday that he wanted peace but that his demands for ending Moscow’s military offensive were “unchanged”.

Those demands include that Ukraine abandon territory and end ambitions to join NATO.

Ukraine launched drone attacks on cities in southern Russia, killing one person and injuring at least 16 more — just a day before President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

A Ukrainian drone hit an apartment building in Rostov-on-Don, injuring 13 people who were transferred to medical facilities for treatment, according to the region’s Gov. Yury Slyusar.

In another attack, Ukraine’s drone strike in Belgorod injured three people, according to local officials. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the region, posted a video appearing to show the drone striking a car in the city, located about 24 miles north of the Ukraine border.

Gladkov, in another Thursday post on Telegram, said that a Ukrainian drone struck a car, killing one individual in the village of Pristen.

Ukraine’s officials have not commented on the attacks.

The governor of the Volgograd region, Andrei Bocharov, claimed late Wednesday that debris from a Ukrainian military drone attack caused oil to spill at a local refinery and catch fire.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said its defense systems intercepted 44 of Ukraine’s drones, destroying or intercepting nine over the Volgograd region, on Wednesday and early Thursday.

The drone attacks come as the Russian military has made advances in the eastern region of Donetsk this week, forcing Ukraine’s 1st “Azov” Corps to engage and contain the offensive.

Trump is set to huddle with Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday, the Russian president’s first visit to the U.S. since 2015.

Putin and Trump will hold a joint press conference after their meeting, where they will likely discuss the developments on the battlefield in eastern Europe.

“The president wants to exhaust all options to try to bring this war to a peaceful resolution,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during her appearance on “Fox & Friends” early Thursday.

Trump and Putin’s last in-person meeting was in Helsinki in 2018 during Trump’s first White House term.