Russia just lost Europe's biggest oil tank farm for the fifth time

Ukrainian drones just hit Europe's biggest oil tank farm.

Again.

It happened a few hours ago in Russia's Samara region, at a place called the Samara Linear Production and Dispatch Station, near the town of Prosvet. A fire broke out.

Here's the timeline. An air raid alert went off in the region at 23:19 Kyiv time. Russia shut down the nearby Kurumoch Airport from just after midnight until just before 7am. And at 04:13, NASA's satellite system picked up a heat spike right by the station. That's what's backing up the fire reports.

So why does this one station matter so much?

Because it's huge. It holds 71 storage tanks. Combined, they can hold more than 1.6 million cubic metres of oil. That's according to the Russian outlet Astra. Oil flows in from Western Siberia, from Tatarstan, from other big Russian oil regions. The station blends it all into Urals crude, Russia's main oil export. And Ukraine's General Staff says the same station blends fuel that goes straight to the Russian military.

That's why Ukraine keeps coming back.

And it really does keep coming back. This is at least the fifth reported strike on this exact facility since the start of October. Hit on the 2nd. Hit on the 7th. Hit on the 10th. Hit on the 11th. Now hit again.

The 7 October strike alone destroyed four huge storage tanks. Combined capacity: up to 170,000 tonnes of oil.

So this isn't one attack. It's a facility Ukraine is grinding down, month after month.

And it's part of something bigger. Since the start of this year, Ukraine has been running a long-range drone campaign against Russian refineries and fuel depots. The goal: choke the infrastructure that keeps Russia's war running.

The night before this strike, Ukrainian forces also hit a major refinery at Kstovo, in Nizhny Novgorod region. And in the two weeks before that, at least 28 facilities across Russia were hit. Mostly chemical and oil sites. Including the Kstovo and Novokuibyshevsk refineries.

There were reports that Ukraine had agreed to pause strikes on Russian energy sites, as part of a US proposal. Senior Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent that's not true. Kyiv never agreed to any pause.

So what does Russia say happened?

Not much. Russia has not confirmed the Samara station was even hit. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, the governor of Samara region, said an attack was being repelled and that air defences and mobile fire crews were responding. He did not say what was actually targeted.

Russia's Defence Ministry says it shot down 212 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight, across 17 regions, Samara included. But it has not confirmed a strike on this station specifically.

And Ukraine hasn't officially said it carried out this attack either.

Here's what nobody knows yet. How many tanks were hit this time. How much oil was lost. Whether the fire is out. Whether anyone was hurt.

Astra reported smoke near the station and said local residents heard explosions. But that's Telegram and OSINT reporting only. Nobody independent has confirmed it.

Four strikes in October already destroyed tanks holding up to 170,000 tonnes of oil between them.

Nobody outside Samara can say yet what this one cost.