Today, on the night of March 3, at about 02:35 local time (23:35 Kyiv time), an explosion and a fairly large-scale fire occurred at the Ufaorgsintez plant in the north of Ufa, Bashkortostan.
Local authorities, as of this morning, deny that it was a strike by Ukrainian drones. But Ukraine has long had the ability to hit Russian targets at a distance of more than 1350 km from the front line.
This enterprise is a technological part of Bashneft-Novoil, an oil refinery with a design capacity of more than 7 million tons of oil per year. Both enterprises belong to Bashneft.
At the same time, the strike on Ufaorgsintez is quite logical from the point of view of a very calibrated selection of targets. Because we are not talking about another oil refinery. And not even about the fact that Ufaorgsintez is one of the key enterprises that produces about a third of phenol and acetone in the Russian Federation, as well as 15% of all high-pressure polyethylene.
The fact is that the gross share of Ufaorgsintez products goes to manufacturers of explosives. In particular, according to the Russian databases of state contracts, one of the main customers of the products of this enterprise are: “Cheboksary Production Association named after V.I. Chapaev”, “Biysky Oleum Plant” and “Plant named after V.I. Chapaev”. Sverdlov”.
The plant in Cheboksary is directly owned by Rostec, it specializes in the production of explosives, rubber and plastic products and is directly owned by Rostec. Introduction in Biysk is a federal state-owned enterprise for the production of explosives, is a branch of the “Plant named after S. Sverdlov”, which is the largest manufacturer of explosives in the Russian Federation.
The total known value of Ufaorgsintez’s state contracts with these three defense enterprises contained in the databases is more than $ 1 billion (94.48 billion rubles). That is why it is not surprising that in 2016 Rostec very much wanted to include Ufaorgsintez in its composition, but in the end it was absorbed by Bashneft.
It should be noted that this is not the only Russian petrochemical enterprise that is a supplier of raw materials for the production of explosives, which has recently been the subject of an explosion. In particular, at the end of January, drones hit the Sibur-Kstovo enterprise, which is the main supplier of raw materials for the already mentioned “Plant. Sverdlov”, and is also part of Putin’s “common fund”.