Four industry sources told Reuters that the AVT-3 primary crude distillation unit at the Yaroslavl refinery, known as YaNOS, was damaged. The unit has a capacity of 17,140 tonnes per day, about 40% of the plant's capacity. The refinery has three such units in total. The AT-4 unit is designed for 11,430 tonnes per day (27% of capacity), and the AVT-4 for 14,300 tonnes (33%).
By the time of the new attack, AVT-4 was already under repair after damage sustained in a raid on 28 August. It has not resumed operation.
Wholesale batches of YaNOS petroleum products were not offered for sale at exchange trading on 17 September. The Moscow region has lost fuel supplies from two refineries important to the region, Deutsche Welle notes.
Governor of the Yaroslavl region Mikhail Yevrayev said on the morning of 17 September in Telegram that the region was repelling a large drone attack. According to him, 65 drones were shot down, there were no deaths or injuries, and there was damage to the oil refinery and fires that took several hours to extinguish.
The declared capacity of the Yaroslavl refinery is 300,000 barrels per day, or 15 million tonnes of oil per year. In 2024, the plant processed 14.9 million tonnes of raw material, producing 2.6 million tonnes of gasoline, 4 million tonnes of diesel fuel and 4.7 million tonnes of fuel oil. YaNOS is owned by Slavneft, which is controlled on a parity basis by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.
Since the start of the full-scale war, the plant in Yaroslavl has been repeatedly hit by Ukrainian UAVs; in 2026, fires broke out at the plant at least eight times.
This is the second major refinery to suspend operations in September due to the consequences of drone attacks. Since 6 September, Rosneft's refinery in Ryazan, with a capacity of 17 million tonnes of oil per year, has not been shipping fuel. Reuters previously reported the shutdown of the Syzran refinery (15 September) and the Saratov refinery (11 September).
According to the Gdebenzin service, which aggregates websites and services for finding fuel, in mid-September AI-92 and AI-95 gasoline was unavailable at about half of the country's filling stations. The acute fuel shortage has continued since mid-August, Novaya Gazeta Europe writes.
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov spoke positively in mid-September about US President Donald Trump's idea of an "energy truce" that would involve ending Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. Peskov declined to answer whether the Kremlin was ready to stop strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure in response.
Sources differ: the Ukrainian side claimed a strike on the Yaroslavl refinery, as stated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; Governor Mikhail Yevrayev confirmed damage to the plant but did not name Ukrainian drones as the cause, reporting the repulsion of a UAV attack and 65 drones shot down. The data on damage to AVT-3 comes only from Reuters' industry sources, and there is no official confirmation of this information.