A fire erupted at the Yaroslavnefteorgsintez oil refinery in Yaroslavl, Russia, (700+km away from the Ukrainian border) with authorities claiming the incident was not caused by drone attacks, according to reports from Russian Telegram channels and local officials.

Local residents documented the incident on social media, with footage showing thick black smoke rising from the facility’s grounds.

The refinery, also known as Novo-Yaroslavl Refinery or YANOS, ranks as the fifth-largest oil processing plant in Russia by volume of hydrocarbon raw material processing. 

Governor Mikhail Evraev addressed speculation about the cause of the blaze, emphasizing that the facility had not been targeted by drones.

“No UAV attacks were recorded today. The fire is of a man-made/technological nature,” he stated.

Emergency services were deployed to extinguish the fire, he added.

YANOS operates as the primary processing asset of the vertically integrated company NGK Slavneft. The ownership structure shows that Rosneft and Gazprom jointly control 99.7% of Slavneft’s shares on equal terms, linking the facility to two of Russia’s major state-controlled energy companies.