UFA, RUSSIA — Radiy Khabirov, the governor of the Bashkortostan region in Russia, said that a drone attack on an oil industry plant on Saturday started a fire. The governor called the incident a “terrorist attack by aircraft-type drones.”
Khabirov said on his Telegram channel that two drones were used to attack the Bashneft company’s buildings in Ufa. There was a fire at the production site after one of the drones was shot down. The second drone was likewise taken out successfully. The governor said that the damage was not very bad and that no one was hurt.
Unverified video that was shared on local Telegram channels seems to show something flying into the building, followed by a big fireball. The attack is a new, deeper blow to Russian territory. Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, lies around 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) from the border with Ukraine. Khabirov’s tweet didn’t say anything about Ukraine directly, but Kyiv has been using deep-strike drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure a lot lately.
The target’s location from the border shows that the drones being used have a much longer range than they did in earlier strikes of this kind, which usually hit installations closer to the front lines. Being able to hit such a faraway and important piece of energy infrastructure could mean that the conflict is entering a new phase.
Bashneft, a subsidiary of Russia’s Rosneft, runs one of the country’s biggest oil refineries in Ufa. It processes a lot of oil for both internal use and export.