On the night of March 3, an explosion occurred at the Ufaorgsintez plant at around 02:35 local time in the north of Ufa, the Bashkortostan region of russia, resulting in a large-scale fire.
This enterprise is a technological part of Bashneft-Novoil, an oil refinery with a design capacity of processing over 7 million tons of oil per year. Both enterprises belong to the Bashneft company.
The following morning, local authorities denied that this was a strike by Ukrainian drones, while Ukrainian officials have not commented yet. Local media, however, claim the facility was hit by unmanned aerial vehicles.
Ukrainian attack drones successfully conducted one of the deepest strikes of the war tonight, hitting Russia’s Ufa Oil Refinery, over 1300 km behind the frontline.
The Russian refinery is burning. pic.twitter.com/dKF9EjINLR
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 2, 2025
War News Hub notes that although the blow landing about 1,350 kilometers from the frontline is among the longest-range ones ever recorded, it is not unprecedented, and Ukraine has long had the capability to reach russian facilities at such distances.
The strike on Ufaorgsintez displays Ukraine’s very careful selection of targets. It’s not just another oil refinery struck to undermine russia financially, and even the fact that Ufaorgsintez is one of the key enterprises in the industry, producing about a third of phenol and acetone in the country, as well as 15% of all high-density polyethylene, is but a bonus.
The main strategic value of Ufaorgsintez lies in its significance as a provider of materials for the explosives industry. According to russian state contract data banks, the primary customers of this enterprise are the Cheboksary Production Association Named After V.I. Chapaev, Biysk Oleum Plant, and the Plant Named After Sverdlov.
The plant in Cheboksary is directly owned by Rostec. It specializes in the production of explosives, rubber, and plastic products. The plant in Biysk is a federal enterprise that operates as a branch of the larger Sverdlov Plant, the largest explosives manufacturer in the entire russian federation.
Publicly known state contracts between Ufaorgsintez and these three defense enterprises, located within military bases, amount to 94.48 billion rubles in total, or over $1 billion. Therefore, it’s not surprising that in 2016, Rostec wanted to absorb Ufaorgsintez, but in the end, it was the oil maker Bashneft that did it instead.
It should be noted that Ufaorgsintez is not the only russian petrochemical company and raw material supplier for explosives to have recently suffered from an explosion. In late January 2025, drones hit the Sibur-Kstovo refinery, which is the main provider of raw materials for the aforementioned Sverdlov Plant and belongs personally to russian president Vladimir Putin and his clique.