Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed a wave of precision strikes overnight on January 1, 2026, targeting the Ilsky Oil Refinery in Krasnodar region where a major fire erupted, an oil facility in Almetyevsk, Tatarstan, a Shahed drone storage site in Donetsk, a Tor-M2 system near Shevchenko, a fuel depot in Ilovaisk, and a command post near Avdiivka, according to a post by @NOELreports in the past 29 minutes. These strikes confirm earlier Russian media reports of UAV debris falling on the Almetyevsk facility and Ilsky refinery shared during the 9:45 to 10:45 AM UTC window today by @blyskavka_ua, as previously noted. In a separate development over Chornomorsk, a Ukrainian Yak-52 aircraft pursued a Russian Shahed drone at low altitude, per an @NOELreports update within the reporting window ending at 11:15 AM UTC. President Zelensky stated in a post shared by @Osint613 during this period: “When Putin says, ‘We’re not going to attack you,’ that is the first warning of exactly where his tanks will go and where his drones will fly. And today we have every right to say this plainly: Ukraine is the only shield that separates Europe’s comfortable way of life from the Russian world.”
