On the night of February 3, two powerful explosions caused a fire at an oil refinery in Ufa. The Bashkortostan emergency services confirmed the fire but did not specify the cause, stating that the blaze occurred near a furnace area and posed no threat to local residents.
According to surveillance footage published by Astra, the attack took place at 2:38 a.m. local time. Ukrainian OSINT analysts identified that the strike hit the L-24-7 unit, used for hydroprocessing oil distillates. The attack also directly damaged fuel storage tanks—two vertical steel tanks (RVSP-3000) and a third RVSP-2000 tank, which detonated. Additionally, two main crude supply pipelines were destroyed.
The head of the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council is Andrii Kovalenko noted that this refinery is one of Russia’s largest, with a total capacity of around 20 million tons per year. Ufa is a key oil refining hub, and Bashkortostan ranks among Russia’s top five refining regions.
The refinery holds strategic importance for the Russian military as it is part of a network supplying fuel to its forces. Originally established in 1935, the facility was renamed "Bashneft – Ufaneftekhim" in 2012. It is part of the Bashneft refining complex, which has a total capacity of 23.5 million tons annually and includes Ufaorgsintez and the Shkapovskoye gas processing plant.
