Ukrainian drones struck the 10-million-tonne-per-year Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refinery in Bashkortostan overnight on Oct. 8, according to Ukrainian monitoring channels and eyewitness footage, in the facility's fourth reported strike incident since 2023.

The same overnight raid hit a Yandex data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, knocking part of Russia's dominant cloud and search platform offline. Yandex confirmed service disruptions at the Sasovo site.

The Salavat complex, one of Russia's largest integrated refining and petrochemical plants, can process up to 10 million tonnes of hydrocarbon feedstock annually and produces more than 150 product grades, including gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, bitumen, polyethylene, styrene and ammonia.

What damage did the strikes cause?

Astra, citing photos and videos from eyewitnesses, reported a fire in the area of the Salavat refinery. The Exilenova+ monitoring channel first reported the strike. No throughput impact or restart timeline has been disclosed.

The plant has a documented strike history:

• An Aug. 13 attack triggered a fire at the facility.
• A July 14 strike forced the complete suspension of oil processing, according to previous reports.
• Ukrainian drones damaged primary crude-processing units at the refinery in 2023.

At Sasovo, in Ryazan Oblast, the Exilenova+, VChK-OGPU and Astra channels reported the overnight strike on the Yandex data center. Eyewitness footage showed a large fire at the site following the attack.

The facility sits on the grounds of the Sasta plant, which manufactures metalworking machinery and supplies equipment to Russian defense industry companies. The data center opened in 2011.

How did Yandex respond?

Yandex acknowledged what it called an "incident" and said some of its services were temporarily unavailable. Users reported problems accessing Yandex Disk and Yandex Documents.

"We will provide updates on the recovery process," the company said.

The Sasovo facility represents a significant investment by Russia's largest technology company. In 2022, Sasovo city administration head Yevgenia Rubtsova said Yandex had invested more than 6 billion rubles ($75 million) in the data center over 11 years.

Yandex is Russia's dominant search engine and offers cloud computing, online storage, email, maps and ride-hailing services. Its data centers support the company's online and cloud platforms.

Why is the refining sector the recurring target?

The reported strikes follow President Volodymyr Zelensky's statement in October that he had approved a plan for long-range attacks against Russia. Zelensky has said Ukraine will respond to Russian attacks on its civilian infrastructure by targeting corresponding Russian facilities.

The data center strike also follows a Russian attack on the Datagroup data center in Kyiv in late September. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that facility processed and transmitted intelligence data for the Ukrainian military.

Kyiv has increasingly targeted Russian energy, industrial and military-linked infrastructure with long-range drone strikes, seeking to disrupt systems supporting Russia's war effort. The Oct. 8 raid continues a pattern that has repeatedly removed major refining capacity at Salavat and other Russian plants since 2023.

The watch item: any statement from Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat on processing rates and restart timing after the fourth strike on the Bashkortostan complex, and Yandex's recovery timeline for the Sasovo cloud services.