The Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat facility is one of Russia’s largest oil refining and petrochemical plants, located some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from the front line in Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones attacked the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refining complex in the city of Salavat, located in Bashkortostan, overnight on Thursday, October 8, according to Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channels Exilenova+ and Supernova+. After analyzing photos and videos from eyewitnesses, Russian outlet Astra also concluded that the fire most likely broke out on the grounds of the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refinery. Ukrainian drones have repeatedly targeted this refinery since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine. Local authorities in Bashkortostan declared an air raid alert in the early hours of October 8 amid the threat of drone attacks. The head of Salavat’s city administration, Marat Zagidullin, said debris from several drones caused a fire in the industrial zone, but there were no casualties. He stated that operations at the facility, which he did not identify by name, were continuing. Emergency services were deployed to the scene. That same night, the Armed Forces of Ukraine targeted the Yandex data center in the city of Sasovo, Ryazan region. The data center is situated on the premises of the Sasta factory, which manufactures metalworking machines and supplies equipment, including to companies in the defense industry. Eyewitness footage showed a major fire at the facility following the strike. The company initially reported an "incident affecting part of the infrastructure" but later confirmed the strike occurred. A Yandex representative said a fire broke out at the data center and that operations there had been completely halted, affecting the functioning of Yandex services. On the Yandex Cloud website, the company reported power supply problems in one of the data center’s zones and advised clients to switch to other zones. Users also reported outages affecting Yandex Disk and Yandex Documents. In Krasnodar, local emergency headquarters reported that drone fragments fell on the grounds of an industrial site, damaging a building and starting a fire. No casualties were reported, and the name of the enterprise was not disclosed. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that, from the evening of October 7, Russian air defenses shot down 399 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, annexed Crimea, and the Black Sea. The ministry stated that because of the drone attacks, Russian oil refineries have been forced to cut or halt production. According to previous reports, such interruptions contributed to the fuel crisis in Russia over the summer. In early October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Kyiv planned to intensify attacks on Russian oil refineries. In response, Russia’s Defense Ministry warned it could expand its attacks on targets in Ukraine.