Ukraine Drone Attack: Russia Fires 227, Afipsky Refinery Hit

Russia has launched 227 attack drones against Ukraine in a single overnight raid which began at 18:00 on November 5, with 86 of them jet-powered variants which fly considerably faster than the propeller-driven Shahed-136 the campaign was built around. The Ukrainian Air Force reported on the morning of November 6 that 196 drones had been shot down or suppressed by 08:00, while approximately 15 were still in the air and strikes had been recorded at 14 locations, with falling debris reported at eight more. Alongside Shahed-type drones the raid included Gerbera drones and decoys intended to saturate the air defence network. With 38 percent of the drones launched being jet-powered, the raid highlights how far Russia has shifted toward faster designs which leave Ukraine’s mobile anti-aircraft gun teams significantly less time to engage.

The drones were launched from four sites in Russia as well as from occupied Donetsk and Crimea, and the electricity grid was once again the principal target. Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov stated on November 6 that the strikes had caused new power outages in seven regions, among them Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye, with the situation most difficult around the capital, where heavy damage forced utility workers to keep restricting the network. Kiev regional governor Tymur Tkachenko reported damage to energy facilities in two districts and three people injured in a third, where a fire destroyed a private house, while strikes on five districts of the Dnepropetrovsk region damaged homes, storage facilities and a sports complex. The raid comes only days after Russia fired more than 60 missiles and 289 drones at Ukraine overnight into November 3, ahead of U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11.

Ukrainian drones struck southern Russia the same night, with the operational headquarters of Krasnodar region reporting that falling drone debris had started a fire on the premises of an enterprise in the settlement of Afipsky. The headquarters did not name the facility, although the settlement’s refinery, with a capacity of 9.1 million tonnes of crude a year or roughly 3 percent of the national total, was widely reported to be the site hit. The plant produces gasoline and Euro-5 diesel and was struck in both July and August, with the August attack killing two people at the nearby railway station according to regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed that 142 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted overnight over nine regions from Kursk and Moscow to Krasnodar and Crimea and over the Black and Azov Seas.

The strike follows President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer to pause refinery strikes for one month if the United States supplied a month’s worth of Patriot interceptors, made on November 1 after President Donald Trump had called the campaign “a disgrace” for pushing up world oil prices. Washington approved the sale of 500 PAC-3 interceptors on October 30, although Zelensky has said deliveries may begin only in a few years and told Germany’s defence minister on November 4 of a chronic shortage of Patriot interceptors. Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence claimed on November 5 that 15 of Russia’s 38 major refineries had been out of operation at the end of September, with refining volumes at those plants down 55.4 percent since the start of the year, although a Kremlin decree of September 28 has restricted access to the data which could confirm it.