Ukraine's General Staff confirmed on September 26 that its forces had struck Russia's Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region overnight, causing a fire, the Kyiv Independent reported, a day after Lukoil's Perm refinery stopped processing crude following a drone strike, industry sources told Reuters.

In Kyiv, the toll from Russian drone attacks on September 25 rose to seven killed and 59 injured, 25 of them in hospital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, the Kyiv Post reported. Among the dead was a 14-year-old boy, killed when a drone hit a 16-storey residential building in the Pechersk district at about 08:00.

Across Ukraine, Russian attacks killed 10 people and injured 61 over the past day, regional authorities said, the Kyiv Independent reported. They included six killed and 14 injured at a farm in Stara Hnylytsia in the Kharkiv region.

ArcelorMittal said on September 25 that it is unable to safely and sustainably restart its Kryvyi Rih steelworks after multiple recent missile strikes and expects an impairment charge of about $1bn. With Zaporizhstal and Kametstal also halted by strikes, the plants that made most of Ukraine's steel are now idle.

Russia's defence ministry claimed its air defences destroyed 645 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones between 20:00 Moscow time on September 25 and 08:00 on September 26, over 10 regions, the Moscow region, Krasnodar and Stavropol, Crimea and the Black and Azov seas, according to the ministry statement as circulated by Russian military channels.

Refinery strikes

Krasnodar region: the General Staff said the Ilsky refinery, about 400km from where the drones were launched, caught fire after the strike, which the Unmanned Systems Forces said was carried out by their 1st Separate Center and the 414th brigade, known as "Madyar's Birds", the Kyiv Independent reported. Governor Veniamin Kondratyev had confirmed that drones attacked the Seversky district, reporting deaths without giving a number, one person seriously injured and fires at two enterprises he did not name. No halt at Ilsky has been reported. The plant, with capacity of about 6.6mn tonnes a year, had been hit at least 16 times by June, ASTRA said, and the General Staff also claimed strikes on it on June 2 and August 8.

Perm: the halt follows a strike on the night of September 24 to 25 that Makhonin said killed a man. Ukrainian outlets had named the refinery that morning, citing monitoring channels, and it is the plant's sixth dated strike since April, by IntelliNews' ledger. The shutdowns have already pushed Russian regions to reimpose fuel rationing.

Rostov region: the General Staff said a fire broke out at the Novoshakhtinsk plant, which it put at about 7.5mn tonnes a year, and that its forces also hit 64L6 Gamma-S1 and 39N6 Kasta-2E2 radar stations nearby. Governor Yuri Slyusar had said on September 25 that the plant had temporarily suspended operations.

Nationwide: with Perm moved into the halted column on September evidence, plants reported halted or cut this month account for about 121.6mn tonnes a year, or 37% of Russia's 327mn tonnes nameplate capacity, by IntelliNews' refinery ledger, and up to 159.2mn tonnes, or 49%, if earlier halts still hold. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in early September that about 10% of Russian refining capacity was under repair.

Metal plants hit

Kryvyi Rih: ArcelorMittal said on September 25 that it could not safely and sustainably restart ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih after multiple recent missile strikes and expects an impairment of about $1bn, the Kyiv Post reported. The plant has capacity of about 6.5mn tonnes of steel a year and produced 4.92mn tonnes in 2021, by Global Energy Monitor's figures.

Zaporizhzhia and Kamianske: Zaporizhstal, part-owned by Metinvest, has been halted since strikes on August 11 and 27, with blast furnace damage reported on September 12, and Metinvest's Kametstal plant since a ballistic missile strike on September 5. With the Kryvyi Rih works, the three plants made about 90% of Ukraine's steel, the Kyiv Post reported.

Dnipro: Interpipe suspended production at its Dnipro site after a missile strike on the night of September 21 to 22, SteelOrbis reported. The company did not say which of its plants was hit.

The status of 38 Ukrainian steel, iron ore, coke, ferroalloy, pipe and non-ferrous plants is tracked in IntelliNews' metals and mining ledger, linked below.

Factories and military targets in Russia

Stavropol region: Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said drones were attacking the industrial zone of Nevinnomyssk and that air defences were engaging them. He reported no damage, News.ru reported.

Nationwide: Ukraine's General Staff said on September 25 that its drones had hit the Perm and Novoshakhtinsk refineries, two air-defence radars near Novoshakhtinsk, the Iskra plant in Ulyanovsk and two synthetic rubber plants, Efremov in the Tula region and Voronezhsintezkauchuk, which it said make solid rocket fuel for Iskander missiles, Slovo i Dilo reported. Russian officials have confirmed none of the plant hits.

Voronezh: Governor Alexander Gusev raised the number injured in the September 25 attack to 13, including a six-year-old, two of them in intensive care, VZGLYAD reported.

Ulyanovsk: the number injured rose to 12, including children, and schools were closed, Gazeta.ru reported.

Tula region: Governor Dmitry Milyaev said 18 drones were destroyed overnight, with no casualties, RT reported.

Sevastopol: Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said five drones were shot down in two evening attacks on September 25, with no injuries or damage, Lenta.ru reported.

Krasnodar and Sochi: both airports suspended flights during the overnight raid, Rosaviatsia said, Interfax reported.

Ukraine under fire

Kyiv: the toll for September 25 rose to seven killed and 59 injured, Klitschko said, up from the five killed and 31 injured reported earlier. At least four people were killed at the office building in the Solomianskyi district in the daytime attack. Around 18:00 a drone crashed near a second office building in Solomianskyi, blowing out its windows, and three people near a damaged medical facility, including a child, were taken to hospital, the Kyiv Post reported.

Kyiv: the 14-year-old was killed when a drone hit the 10th and 11th floors of a 16-storey building in Pechersk at about 08:00 on September 25, police said; at least seven residents were injured, the Kyiv Post reported. Datagroup said its damaged data centre's services were running from backup facilities.

Kyiv: "The Russians are constantly expanding their escalation campaign: American and other businesses, data centers, internet providers - all ordinary life is simply a target for Russia," Zelenskiy said, as quoted by NV. Overnight into September 26, falling drones set fire to an office building and homes in Solomianskyi and injured four people, NV reported.

Kyiv region: a warehouse burned in the Boryspil district overnight and two people were injured, the State Emergency Service said, Antikor reported. The owner was not named.

Odesa region: drones hit a Nova Poshta logistics terminal, its warehouses and a cargo truck on the morning of September 25. Prosecutors said two people were killed and two injured, while city military administration head Serhiy Lysak reported one death, UNIAN reported.

Odesa: video posted by Ukrainian channels was said to show a strike on the Odesa plant of the Swedish paint maker Eskaro. Neither the company nor officials had confirmed it.

Dnipropetrovsk region: two Russian jet-powered glide bombs launched from a Su-34 struck the town of Novooleksandrivka, just south of Dnipro, on September 25, according to the monitoring account AMK Mapping. Officials had not reported damage or casualties.

Kharkiv region: the number injured at the Stara Hnylytsia farm rose to 14, Kharkiv regional authorities said, the Kyiv Independent reported. Six people were killed.

Poltava: a drone scored a direct hit on railway infrastructure in the city community and damaged three houses, the city council said, Ukrinform reported.

Zhytomyr region: drones hit transport infrastructure, and fires were put out with no casualties, regional head Vitalii Bunechko said, Suspilne reported.

Zaporizhzhia: an overnight strike on the Shevchenkivskyi district killed two women and injured two people, including a four-year-old, and seven patients were evacuated from a medical facility, local officials said, Ukrainian News reported.

Kharkiv: drones injured four people and set cars on fire in the Kyivskyi and Saltivskyi districts, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said, UNN reported.

Nationwide: Russian attacks caused new power outages in six regions on September 25, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Odesa and Mykolaiv, grid operator Ukrenergo said, Ukrinform reported. It planned no consumption restrictions for September 26.

Nationwide: Russia has stepped up strikes on data centres and telecommunications facilities, disrupting internet access across Kyiv, Financial Times correspondent Christopher Miller wrote.

Nationwide: Russia's defence ministry said it had hit a Fire Point drone storage and assembly site in Boryspil where Honeywell TFE731 engines for Flamingo cruise missiles were stored, logistics centres in Odesa and Nerubaiske, mooring infrastructure and three storage facilities at the port of Reni and a bulk carrier at sea, TASS reported. No Ukrainian source has confirmed those targets.

Nationwide: Russia's defence ministry later said it had also struck a second cargo vessel in the Odesa region that it said had delivered military supplies to Chornomorsk, and a data centre it said was used to process intelligence data, Reuters reported. Reuters could not verify the claims.

Weapons and technology

"At our last meeting, President Trump emphasised to me that yes, I have made a final decision. Ukraine will receive licences for the production of Patriot missiles," Zelenskiy told journalists on September 25, Euronews reported. The US has not confirmed it. The State Department told DW on September 23 that no final decision had been made, the Kyiv Post reported.

Germany is separately pressing Washington to allow PAC-3 production in Europe, which would need the approval of the US government and Lockheed Martin.

"I plead that Elon Musk would give the Ukrainians the possibility to use Starlink in areas where there are ballistic missile launchers," Finnish President Alexander Stubb told Reuters in New York on September 24. He said Starlink could help with air defence "to a certain extent", Meduza reported.

Zelenskiy said on September 25 that Ukraine is speeding up production of interceptors against jet-powered Shaheds after a Staff meeting reviewed their tests. Some 67 Ukrainian companies are working on such interceptors and three to five have shown results, Mezha reported.

Up to 12 British defence companies will get access to Avengers Labs, Ukraine's platform for training AI models for drones and robots on an annotated dataset of 5mn frames of real combat, the Defence Ministry said. The data stays inside the platform and cannot be downloaded, Euromaidan Press reported.

The Alter Ego battalion of the 93rd Mechanised Brigade has used a heavy bomber drone to carry its Desantnyk ground robot behind Russian lines and drop it there, and the robot has already been used in combat, the Brave1 defence cluster said. Brave1 is helping move it into serial production, Euromaidan Press reported.

Russia launches its drones from a network of purpose-built drone ports, the largest at Tsymbulovo in the Oryol region, about 180km from Ukraine's border. The 5 sq km site, built by Alabuga from August 2024, can hold up to 3,000 warheads, and new launchers for jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones were added in 2026, according to an investigation by Oboronka and the GEOINT project Cyberboroshno.

Arson and sabotage in the EU and the UK

Poland: prosecutors opened an investigation into the fire at the Starlink ground station at Wola Krobowska, which Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski called likely sabotage. They are examining a suspicion that the perpetrators acted on the instructions of Russian special services, and the case has passed to the ABW internal security agency and the central police investigation bureau, MILMAG reported. No one has been charged.

Europe: Detentions have cut the number of Russian shadow fleet tankers sailing under false flags from a peak of 101 in October 2025 to 45 at the end of June, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said in a report on September 25. Some 107 vessels have moved to the Russian flag since January 2025, lifting the Russian registry by 36% to 382, which CREA said makes them effectively immune to European interceptions, the Kyiv Independent reported.

Europe: Germany's accusation that Russia was behind explosives-laden drones found at Leipzig airport in August was the first time Berlin had blamed Moscow for a physical attack on its soil, the Kyiv Independent noted in an analysis of Europe's response. It cited one study that recorded 151 hybrid incidents in Europe between the start of the full-scale invasion and March 2026.

Tit for tat

Three days after Zelenskiy told Axios that Kyiv was ready for an energy ceasefire, Ukraine has now hit refineries in Perm, Novoshakhtinsk and Ilsky, while Russia has killed seven people in Kyiv in a day, hit its data centres and forced ArcelorMittal to give up on restarting its Kryvyi Rih steelworks.

Moscow says it is hunting the engines of Ukraine's Flamingo missiles; Kyiv says it is hunting the plants that make fuel for Russia's Iskanders. Neither side has stopped aiming at what keeps the other's war economy running.

The ledgers

The running ledgers are kept as five public spreadsheets at permanent addresses. The first three are non-exhaustive, every row is sourced, and where only one side has spoken the row says so. Defence ministry figures are recorded as claims, and in the sabotage ledger attribution is given exactly as the authorities state it and no further. The fifth tracks what has happened to Ukraine's steel, iron ore, coke, ferroalloy and non-ferrous plants since 2021, grouped by owner.

RUSSIA STRIKES LEDGER: 

Russian strikes on Ukraine's economic infrastructure, 260 rows

UKRAINE STRIKES LEDGER: 

Ukrainian strikes on economic infrastructure in Russia and occupied territory, 154 rows

ARSON & SABOTAGE LEDGER: 

Arson, sabotage and drone incursions in the EU and the UK, 53 rows

METAL STRIKES LEDGER: 

Ukraine's metals and mining assets: 2021 baseline against status in September 2026, 38 plants and mines

REFINERY STRIKES LEDGER: 

Russian oil refineries hit, and how badly, 27 refineries

Russian oil refineries hit by Ukrainian strikes, as of September 26, 2026. Non-exhaustive; strike counts are floors. Damage: 0 claimed, no damage confirmed; 1 fire or minor damage; 2 secondary unit damaged, output reduced; 3 primary distillation unit damaged; 4 refinery halted. Plants reported halted or cut in Sep 2026 account for about 121.6 mn t/yr, about 37% of the 327 mn t/yr nameplate total; up to 159.2 mn t/yr (49%) if earlier halts still hold. Russian officials put capacity under repair at about 10% (Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, early September). Status mostly from unnamed industry sources cited by Reuters. Full sourced ledger: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AHjZvX9Hf-6jdKxcTE8Dw7f6O2_svY0kX54sqKPyU_s