Ukraine strikes Samara oil pumping station and Lipetsk-2 airfield in Russia

Samara station strike

Ukraine's General Staff said on Saturday, 14 November, that a fire had broken out at the Samara linear production and dispatch station near the settlement of Prosvet, with several oil tanks burning. The claim was posted on the General Staff's Telegram channel and the attack took place on Friday, 13 November. The SBU, Ukraine's Security Service, said drones from its Alpha special unit struck the site and that hits on storage tanks had been preliminarily confirmed. Bloomberg places the facility about 860 kilometres southeast of Moscow. Russia had not issued a statement at the time of reporting.

What the station does

The General Staff says the station receives crude from Tatarstan, western Siberia and other producing regions and blends it into Urals, the benchmark grade for Russian exports. The SBU adds that the oil is mixed from batches with different sulphur content and that Urals makes up to 50% of total Russian oil exports. According to the SBU, the complex covers more than 216 hectares and holds 71 tanks with a combined capacity above 1.6 million cubic metres, a figure Bloomberg also gives. Four trunk pipelines feed the station, which sends oil onward towards the Druzhba pipeline and the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and supplies Russian refineries. Kazakh crude also runs through the hub, and the SBU says the facility belongs to Transneft.

Lipetsk-2 airfield

The General Staff also reported a strike on 13 November on the Lipetsk-2 airfield in Lipetsk region, which hosts Russian military aviation. It said a hangar storing special equipment for aircraft maintenance, an aviation fuel tank and the airfield's central command and control post were hit. Ukraine's military intelligence, HUR, reported in December 2025 that pro-Ukrainian partisans set fire to two Su-30 fighter jets at an airfield near the city of Lipetsk. The base is reported to house Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 aircraft.

Earlier strikes and damage

The SBU lists earlier strikes on the Samara station on 2, 7, 10 and 11 October and on 2 November. Satellite images dated 8 November reportedly show considerable damage from those attacks, with up to ten tanks burned out and heavy damage to surrounding infrastructure. After an earlier attack, Kazakhstan had to temporarily halt transport through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline. The extent of damage from the 13 November strike had not yet been established in the reporting.

Wider campaign

Russia and Ukraine strike each other's energy infrastructure almost daily, aiming to damage their economies and their capacity to keep fighting. Kyiv aims with its campaign against refineries, tank farms and pumping stations to reduce Russia's fuel supply and the revenue that finances the war. The General Staff placed the Friday strike within that campaign and described the Samara station as one of the most important nodes of the Russian oil system. The Lipetsk-2 strike targeted support and command facilities rather than the aircraft themselves, according to the General Staff's list of damage.