Drones attacked Volgograd: Wildberries and the Lukoil oil refinery may have been targeted. VIDEO+PHOTO
On the night of 31 July, explosions were heard in Volgograd following a drone attack. Fires broke out at warehouses in the city’s Dzerzhinsky district and at a fuel and energy complex in the south of the city
This was reported by Censor.NET, citing Russian Telegram channels and OSINT communities.
Andrey Bocharov, Governor of the Volgograd Region, reported that fires had been recorded at warehouse facilities and an industrial enterprise as a result of the attack. He did not specify the names of the facilities.
Meanwhile, Telegram channels note that last spring, a large Wildberries logistics centre covering an area of around 44,000 square metres began operations in the Dzerzhinsky district of the city.
According to Ukrainian monitoring sources, this is the tenth attack on the company’s logistics terminals in Russia since 18 July. The day before, on 30 July, large-scale fires broke out following attacks on Wildberries warehouses in Penza and Sarapul.
Strike on an oil refinery
Monitoring groups have also reported that the "Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererobka" Oil Refinery has once again come under attack.
At the time of publication, there had been no official confirmation of this information from the Ukrainian command.
"Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererobka" is one of the largest oil refineries in southern Russia. Its designed capacity for primary refining is approximately 15.7 million tonnes of crude oil per year.
The refinery produces a wide range of petroleum products, including:
- petrol;
- diesel fuel;
- aviation fuel;
- fuel oil;
- bitumen;
- liquefied hydrocarbon gases;
- other products of deep oil refining.
The plant refines West Siberian and Lower Volga crude oil supplied via the Samara–Tikhorezk pipeline.
Airport operations restricted due to attack
According to monitoring sources, operations at 12 Russian airports have been temporarily suspended due to the threat of drone strikes. These include the airports in Krasnodar, Kaluga, Saratov, Penza, Samara, Volgograd, Ulyanovsk, Kazan, Cheboksary, Bugulma, Nizhnekamsk and Makhachkala.
In addition, Nizhny Novgorod Airport was reportedly only accepting and dispatching flights after obtaining approval from the relevant authorities.
