Ukraine just bombed Russia's explosives supply chain deep in the Urals
1 hour ago · 23 October 2026Share
An FPV operator of the 91st Anti-Tank Battalion of the 16th Army Corps. File photo. General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine · CC BY 4.0
Ukrainian drones just hit a chemical plant deep inside Russia.
And this one makes explosives.
The target is the Azot plant in Berezniki, a town in the Ural Mountains. That's one of the deepest strikes into Russia of the whole war.
It happened around six hours ago, roughly six in the morning, Moscow time. The plant caught fire. People nearby saw smoke rising from a distance.
Dmitry Makhonin is the governor of Perm Krai. He said overnight that air defences shot down drones over the region.
He also said one industrial facility took minor damage from falling debris. He didn't name it.
But he didn't have to. A Russian OSINT channel called Astra looked at footage filmed at the scene and identified the site as Azot. Every outlet covering this points to the same plant.
So think about that gap. A governor calling it minor damage to an unnamed site. And independent footage showing a named chemical plant on fire, for hours.
Now here's why Azot matters.
It's Russia's only producer of higher aliphatic amines, sodium nitrate and crystalline sodium nitrite. It also makes ammonium nitrate, liquid ammonia, urea and nitric acid.
Ammonium nitrate is fertiliser. It's also a component in explosives.
And the plant's nitric acid goes to Russian defence factories, including sites that turn it into explosives and gunpowder.
So this isn't a fertiliser factory with a side use. It's a direct supplier to the plants that arm Russia's war.
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Chaykovsky, Perm Krai, Russia. File photo. Александр Апатин · CC BY 3.0
Azot belongs to Uralchem, run by the Russian billionaire Dmitry Mazepin. The site is huge. Around 140 hectares, roughly 90 production buildings, around 2,500 workers.
And here's the twist. This isn't the first time Ukraine has reached it.
The same plant was hit in September this year. And again last year. That's three strikes on one factory in just over a year.
That's not a one-off raid. That looks like a campaign.
Falling debris from the intercepted drones shattered windows in homes in Berezniki and in the nearby town of Solikamsk, the Moscow Times reports. Russian aviation authorities shut the airspace during the attack. One Ukrainian monitoring report says the region's own security ministry closed airspace around Berezniki.
A Ukrainian monitoring channel says Ukraine's long-range Liutyi drones were used. That claim comes from one source only, and Ukraine's government has not confirmed it.
In fact, Ukraine's government and military have said nothing about this strike at all.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces intercepted hundreds of Ukrainian drones across the country and annexed Crimea overnight. It said air defences were active over the Perm region too. But it has said nothing about damage to the plant, or about any fire.
So we're left with two accounts that don't line up. A governor downplaying it. And footage showing something much bigger burning.
What we don't know yet: how badly the plant is damaged, whether the fire is out, whether anyone was hurt, and how many drones actually got through against how many Russia says it stopped.
Berezniki sits deep inside Russia, far from the nearest point of Ukrainian territory. A year ago, a strike that deep would have stood on its own as remarkable.
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