Samara region Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said air defense forces and mobile fire groups repelled the drone attack. He urged residents to stay in safe places and not publish footage of the aftermath. He did not report any damage to the station.
Samara Mayor Ivan Noskov declared a drone alert, and the city's airport suspended operations for two hours, Meduza reported.
According to the Ukrainian monitoring channels Exilenova+ and Supernova+, the Samara linear production and dispatch station in the settlement of Prosvet, owned by a Transneft subsidiary, is burning. An analysis by Astra also shows smoke over the facility.
The Samara station is a major hub for receiving, blending and transporting oil, linked among other things to the Druzhba pipeline. The facility covers more than 216 hectares and has 71 storage tanks on its grounds.
The station was attacked on October 2, 7 and 10. Ukraine's General Staff said it hit 14 tanks, a pipeline and an automated loading station on October 2, and reported destroying four tanks and causing a large fire after the October 7 attack, Ekho reported.
Russia's Defense Ministry said 212 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the Bryansk, Belgorod, Kursk, Kaluga, Tula, Voronezh, Pskov, Oryol, Lipetsk, Saratov, Samara, Ryazan, Tambov and Rostov regions, the Moscow region, Krasnodar Krai, annexed Crimea, and the waters of the Black and Azov seas.
Accounts diverge: Russian authorities have not reported damage to the station after the latest attack, while Ukrainian monitoring channels say the Samara station is on fire. There is no official confirmation of a strike on the facility.