Zelenskyy says drones hit refineries in Ryazan, Perm and Tatarstan

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 7 September that Ukrainian long-range drones had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region, oil-processing plants in the Perm region and Tatarstan, a storage and launch site for attack drones in Kursk region, and a target in the Black Sea.

The statement came a day after U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner left Kyiv talking about a return to three-way talks with Moscow. Zelenskyy presented the strikes as a reply to Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, not as a comment on the diplomatic calendar. “Our warriors continue responding justly to Russian strikes on Ukraine,” he wrote.

The Ryazan plant, owned by Rosneft, is one of the refineries that feeds the Moscow region. Ukrainian and industry figures put its crude capacity near 17 million tonnes a year. It turns out petrol, diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil and liquefied gases. Independent Russian outlet Astra reported that the same site had already been hit earlier in the war, including in May and July 2026. Ryazan sits roughly 400 to 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, close enough for repeated drone waves and far enough that Russian air defences have still failed to keep it offline for good.

The Perm target matches LUKOIL-Permnefteorgsintez, more than 1,500 kilometres from Ukraine. That plant processes about 13 million tonnes a year. Telegram channels geolocated drone footage over Perm and smoke at the site. The same refinery was struck on 30 April, 7-8 May, 29 July and 21 August this year. Each hit has forced pauses on primary distillation units. The pattern is now familiar. Ukraine does not need to destroy a plant in one night. It needs to keep repair crews on a treadmill through the autumn.

In Tatarstan the likely plant is TANECO at Nizhnekamsk, a Tatneft site with capacity above 16 million tonnes a year. Ukrainian drones hit TANECO on 12 June and 8 July. Together, Perm and TANECO handle on the order of 29 million tonnes of crude a year. That is a large share of the fuel that keeps both the Russian army and the civilian market supplied as winter demand rises.

Zelenskyy did not name the Black Sea target. He also did not give damage assessments. Russian regional officials often describe such nights as debris fires at “industrial sites” and list a handful of people sent to hospital. That language has become a template. It tells the public there was an attack without confirming that a distillation column or a pumping station is out.

The campaign behind Monday’s list has been running for more than a year. Ukrainian drones have now reached most of Russia’s large refineries at least once. Kirishi, Moscow, Volgograd, Syzran, Saratov and others appear on the same ledger. Analysts who track the plants say the problem for Moscow is less a single knockout blow than the inability to finish repairs before the next wave arrives. Fuel exports have been restricted at times. Domestic prices have moved. The army still gets product. The cost of keeping that flow intact keeps rising.

Monday’s strikes also sit next to the Witkoff-Kushner trip. The envoys met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday and Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Sunday. They spoke about territorial questions that only leaders can close. They did not announce a ceasefire date. A government that is being asked to discuss land is, on the same weekend, putting fires on the plants that pay for the war. That is the point Kyiv wants Washington and European capitals to see.

Distance is part of the story. Perm is a 1,500-kilometre flight. Tatarstan is more than 1,100. Those ranges used to belong to scarce cruise missiles. They now belong to cheap long-range drones built in volume. Russia can shoot many of them down. It has not shown that it can shoot all of them down on the same night across four time zones.

What happens next is measurable. If Ryazan, Perm and Nizhnekamsk report multi-day shutdowns, wholesale diesel and jet fuel in central Russia will tighten before the heating season. If the plants restart in hours, the night becomes another line in a long list. Either way, Zelenskyy has put the names on the record on the morning after American envoys left Kyiv empty-handed on dates.