Exploding drones struck an oil refinery and munitions factory far east of Moscow on Tuesday, in what Ukrainian media and military experts said was one of the longest-range attacks by Ukrainian drones so far in the war.
The drones struck in Russia’s Tatarstan region, about 700 miles from Ukrainian-occupied territory. Just a day earlier, a Ukrainian official had announced that the domestically produced drones were now capable of hitting targets further than 1,000 kilometers or 621 miles.
The proposed factory was built by Russia to produce its own arsenal of long-range attack drones based on an Iranian design known as Shaheds. Russia calls these models Geran-2s.
Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone struck a dormitory at a factory in the Tatarstan region. Videos posted online, which have not been confirmed as authentic, showed people diving to the ground as explosions sounded. In the video, a bystander can be heard shouting, “a drone hit the factory!”
Spokespeople for Ukraine’s domestic and military intelligence services declined to comment on the attack in Tatarstan. In the past they have claimed responsibility for some attacks in Russia, but have often refused to confirm or deny their involvement.
The attack on the oil refinery was the 18th launched against Russian refineries with long-range drones since Ukraine began targeting them last October, a campaign that has shrunk Russia’s refining capacity and forced the country to temporarily ban gasoline exports.
The worst previous attack, in January, hit an oil terminal not far from St. Petersburg, about 850 kilometers from Ukraine; a Ukrainian minister, Oleksandr Kamyshin, acknowledged responsibility for that attack and said the drone actually flew much further than that, zigzagging towards its target.
Ukraine relies on domestically produced weaponry to attack inside Russia. The United States, the country’s largest military supplier since Russia invaded in 2022, has banned Ukraine from using American weaponry on targets in Russia.
The drone strikes in Ukraine have often been carried out with two to six drones, a senior Ukrainian official overseeing drone production, Mykhailo Fedorov, told German publication Welt in an interview published this week.
“In the niche of long-range drones, Ukraine has already overtaken Russia with the scale of its production,” Fedorov said. “Thousands have already been produced, almost every day something is burning somewhere on the territory of Russia,” he added.
Ukrainian military experts have questioned these claims, noting that Ukrainian assembly lines, spread across the country in secret locations or underground to avoid Russian missile attacks, have struggled to increase volume even as they have perfected some designs. It is unclear whether Ukraine can consistently hit targets within the range of Tuesday’s attacks.
Valeriy Romanenko, an aviation expert at Ukraine’s National Aviation University, said the strikes in Tatarstan were Russia’s heaviest of the war. The Ukrainian news agency RBC reported that the attack took place deepest in Russian territory.
Mr Romanenko, who reviewed videos posted on social media that appeared to show the drone strikes, said Ukraine had apparently used a model of a light propeller plane manufactured in Ukraine, an Aeroprakt A-22, converted into an unmanned vessel. Ukraine has only limited production capacity for the planes, and they are relatively expensive, costing about $250,000 each, he said.
Russia still has a huge advantage in long-range missiles and drones. Since their introduction to the war in the fall of 2022, Russia has launched at least 4,540 Iranian-designed Shahed long-range drones at military targets, energy infrastructure and cities in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian reports compiled by The New York Times.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting from Kiev.