Satellite images: five strikes leave 34 tanks hit at Russia's Samara oil pumping station
Ukrainian drones have struck an oil pumping station in Russia's Samara Oblast five times, and satellite images show 34 tanks destroyed or damaged. The latest attack, on 2 November, temporarily halted Kazakh oil flows through the Atyrau–Samara pipeline.
Satellite images show that 34 oil tanks were destroyed or damaged at a pumping station in Russia's Samara Oblast after five Ukrainian drone strikes, according to Dnipro Osint, a Ukrainian open-source intelligence project. The station is near the village of Prosvet. Russia blends crude from various fields there into Urals, its main export grade. The most recent attack, overnight on 2 November, led Kazakhstan to temporarily stop oil flows through the Atyrau–Samara pipeline.
Nearly half the tanks
Dnipro Osint published the images on 8 November. The channel said containers shielded some of the station's equipment and probably helped limit the damage. The 34 affected tanks are nearly half of the 71 at the station.
Radio Svoboda's Russian service, which obtained satellite images on 8 November, found that up to 10 tanks had burned out completely. The outlet wrote that smoke was still rising from one of them six days after the latest strike. Ukraine's General Staff said earlier that the 7 October strike alone destroyed four tanks of 50,000 cubic meters each.
Kazakhstan felt it quickly
Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry said oil intake through the Atyrau–Samara pipeline was temporarily suspended on the morning of 2 November because of the drone attack. Ministry spokesperson Asel Serikpayeva said oil was moving normally again from 3 November, following a technical inspection. Atyrau–Samara is Kazakhstan's second-largest oil export route after the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, and both depend on Russian infrastructure.
Samara Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev claimed Russian forces downed 46 drones over the region that night. He did not mention damage to oil facilities, The Insider noted.
A campaign of "long-range sanctions"
Since spring, Ukraine has targeted the pumps and pipelines that carry Russian oil to market, which Ukrainian officials call "long-range sanctions". In May alone, Ukraine's Defense Ministry counted 18 Russian oil facilities struck. Samara shows the same method concentrated on a single node, hit repeatedly within a month.
