Ukrainian special forces strike Syzran oil refinery and Atlant Aero drone plant; refinery halts operations

Ukraine's Special Operations Forces, working with the Unmanned Systems Forces and the Security Service of Ukraine, struck Rosneft's Syzran oil refinery in Samara region overnight on Sept 14-15, hitting the AVT-6 (CDU-6) primary crude distillation unit — 71% of the plant's total processing capacity — and its tank farm, sparking fires. The refinery's smaller CDU-5 unit (29% of capacity) was already offline for repairs from a July strike, so the new hit left the 8.9-million-tonne/year plant with no functioning primary distillation capacity; industry sources told Reuters the refinery halted operations on Sept 15, with repairs to the AVT-6 unit expected to take at least a month. The same overnight wave also struck the Atlant Aero drone-production facility in Taganrog, Rostov region, which manufactures Molniya strike-reconnaissance drones and components for Orion UAVs supplying Russian forces; a large fire was reported there. No casualties were reported at either site. Syzran and the already-halted Saratov refinery (down since Sept 11) together represent about 290,000 barrels/day of combined processing capacity now offline.