Andrei Bocharov, the governor of the Volgograd region, said a fire broke out in an apartment building on Udmurtskaya Street in the Krasnoarmeysky district of Volgograd, with one injured person hospitalized and the blaze contained. He did not mention fires at industrial facilities.
Local residents, cited by The Moscow Times, reported numerous explosions across all districts of the city. Footage reviewed by Astra shows a large fire in the area of two adjacent enterprises — the Volgograd oil refinery and the Kaustik chemical plant.
The Volgograd refinery is owned by Lukoil and ranks among Russia's ten largest. According to The Moscow Times, the plant can process about 14.8 million tons of oil a year and produces automotive gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation kerosene, fuel oil and bitumen. The neighboring Kaustik is a chemical industry enterprise that supplies products to the Russian military-industrial complex. The refinery was previously hit by drones on July 31, when, according to The Moscow Times, key production capacity was damaged and the AVT-1 and AVT-6 primary oil refining units were shut down.
On the same night, the Samara linear production and dispatch station and Transneft's largest tank farm were also struck, Astra writes. The facility covers more than 216 hectares and holds 71 tanks with a combined capacity of more than 1.6 cubic meters of oil, two oil pumping stations and one for mixing oil. Four trunk oil pipelines converge at the Samara station: Almetyevsk — Kuibyshev, Kaltasinsky — Kuibyshev, Nizhnevartovsk — Kurgan — Kuibyshev and Guryev — Kuibyshev.
Samara region authorities did not officially comment on the fire at the facility, but a rocket alert was declared in the region.
Accounts differ: Bocharov reported a fire in a residential building and one injured person, without mentioning fires at industrial facilities. Local residents and Astra report a large fire in the area of the Volgograd refinery and the Kaustik chemical plant and numerous explosions across all districts of the city.