Drone strike sparks major fire at Yaroslavl's Slavneft-YANOS refinery, one of Russia's five largest

A Ukrainian drone attack overnight on Sept 16-17 hit the primary oil distillation unit at the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Yaroslavl, sparking a large fire, regional governor Mikhail Yevraev confirmed. The plant — jointly controlled by Rosneft and Gazprom, with roughly 15 million tonnes/year (~300,000 bpd) of crude capacity — is among Russia's five largest refineries and has now caught fire at least nine times in 2026. No casualties were reported and the fire was fully extinguished by Thursday morning, but authorities closed a section of the M-8 federal highway linking Yaroslavl to Moscow and rerouted public transit around the industrial zone. The same overnight wave also hit Tsentralny military airfield in Rostov-on-Don, damaging aircraft and helicopters there and knocking out power to four city districts when falling drone debris struck a transformer substation — an attack outside this tracker's fuel-crisis scope but confirming the broader deep-strike campaign continues alongside the refinery hits.