Russia just lost a quarter of its synthetic rubber supply
1 hour ago · 24 October 2026Share
An industrial petrochemical facility in Russia with processing structures and storage infrastructure. File photo. Kupchinskiy_A_B · CC BY-SA 3.0
Ukraine just hit the same Russian chemical plant for the third time this year.
The target is Tolyattikauchuk, a petrochemical plant in Tolyatti, in Russia's Samara region. Ukraine's General Staff confirmed the strike a few hours ago.
So what happened? Drones hit the plant overnight. Military observers saw an explosion and a major fire across the whole site. Locals reported a big fire around 6:30am local time, and drones were still flying over the city after that.
Here's why this plant matters. It makes synthetic rubber. And Ukraine's General Staff says that rubber is a key raw material for solid rocket propellant — the fuel inside Russia's tactical and ballistic missiles. The plant also makes monomers, hydrocarbon fractions and high-octane petrol additives.
And this is not the first time. Ukraine hit this exact plant on 12 September. And again in April. The April strike also hit a nearby chemical plant, KuibyshevAzot, and set off explosions and a fire there too.
Three strikes on one factory in seven months. That's not random. That's Ukraine deciding, again and again, that this plant is worth hitting.
So how big is this plant? Tolyattikauchuk makes around 25% of all the synthetic rubber in Russia. One OSINT group, OSINT-Varta, puts its yearly output at around 260,000 tonnes.
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Contains modified NASA International Space Station imagery showing the Earth's limb with aurora over Ukraine and Russia. NASA · Public domain
Now, here's what we don't know for sure. Local reports say workers at the AvtoVAZ car plant next door were evacuated. AvtoVAZ is Russia's biggest carmaker. But that has not been officially confirmed — it's only coming from local and OSINT channels.
Ilya Sukhikh, the mayor of Tolyatti, posted on Telegram that industrial sites in the city were damaged. He said nobody died and nobody was hurt. But he didn't say which sites were hit. So that comment covers the whole city, not Tolyattikauchuk specifically. Russia's government has said nothing specific about this plant at all.
And this strike wasn't on its own. In the same overnight run, Ukraine's General Staff also confirmed hitting the Proton-Elektroteks electronics plant in Oryol. That plant builds parts used in Iskander-M ballistic missiles, S-71 cruise missiles and Pantsir-S1 air defence systems. Ukrainian forces also hit an aircraft at the Yeysk military airfield in Krasnodar region.
Russia's Defence Ministry says its air defences shot down 1,297 drones, one French-made SCALP cruise missile and four Ukrainian Neptune missiles over the past 24 hours. But that's a nationwide number. It doesn't say how many drones actually reached Tolyatti. Russian authorities put out a drone warning across the whole Samara region, and a local airport had to stop flights for a while.
So what don't we know? How badly the plant is damaged. Whether it can still make rubber. How long the fire burned. And beyond the mayor's general comment, there's no figure for the dead or wounded that actually covers this plant.
Ukraine has now hit this one rubber plant three times in seven months. Each time, aiming at the same thing — the material that turns into missile fuel. Whether this strike actually does more damage than the last two is something only time, and Russia's own numbers, will show.
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