Fire erupts from the Kirishi oil refinery in Russia’s Leningrad Oblast after a reported Ukrainian drone strike on Sept. 14, 2025. (Astra)
In footage posted online of a recent Ukrainian attack on Russia on Sept. 8, a fleet of long-range drones and cruise missiles flies past the front lines at dusk before hitting its targets — according to Ukrainian sources, factories-turned-Russian command centers in Donetsk and Makiivka, occupied by Russia since 2014.
Thanks to social media, images of the attack circulated freely, showing at least glimpses of the weaponry involved, as well as the zones targeted. Within hours, Ukrainian OSINTers had geolocated a hill, identifying what was likely the main target: the shuttered radio-electronic factory, Topaz.
Another Ukrainian Telegram channel wrote that Russia was using the factory as a military command post when Ukrainian forces hit it with five cruise missiles. Two military posts were hit with drones and what appears to be at least one Ukrainian-made Peklo “missile-drone.”
Ukraine seldom confirms attacks on Russia, leaving videos shared to social media, particularly Telegram, as one of the only ways to assess the actual results of strikes. But over the past year, Moscow has increasingly banned the distribution of attack footage in some areas in an apparent attempt to stave off panic at home, complicating appraisals of Ukraine’s air campaigns.
“Peklo” missile-drone in an alleged strike on Russian-occupied Donetsk, Ukraine on Sept. 8, 2025. (operativnoZSU/Telegram)
The Sept. 8 attack displayed a new level of sophistication in Ukrainian air assaults. The disparate ways that Ukrainian and Russian sources propagated news of the air strikes further demonstrated tightening Russian censorship on footage of such attacks.
“If Russian society gets more information about successful Ukrainian attacks inside of Russia, this definitely undermines that society’s faith in Russia’s omnipotence as a state.”
Clips of the same attack propagated by outlets aligned with the Russian military feature a haze of digital blur surrounding decontextualized fire, and focus on the apparent death of a civilian in what they term “liberated territory” — how Russia refers to occupied Ukraine.
On the morning of Sept. 11, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, said there had been another Ukrainian attack on the region as well as the city of Belgorod, one of the largest Russian municipalities near Ukrainian-controlled territory.
“More than 30 unmanned aerial vehicles simply fall in different regions of the city, trying to sow panic,” Gladkov wrote.
The details available from the Belgorod attack are deliberately much less vivid than those on Donetsk and Makiivka. In an effort to cut off this “panic,” Gladkov just last week banned the distribution of unofficial photos and videos from drone strikes.
“Only information that has been published by official representatives of government agencies is permitted to be distributed,” Gladkov wrote on Sept. 3. “Government authorities and security agencies are now authorized to publish information first, after which media outlets and other sources — Telegram channels, social networks — can distribute it.”
The oblast is now one of 33 Russian regions that ban the distribution of footage from drone strikes. It’s a number that’s up from 23 just a few months ago, according to Molfar Intelligence Firm, a Ukrainian-based investigation and analysis company.
“The present ban is aimed at hiding and complicating evaluation of the results of drone attacks on Russia’s military and energy infrastructure,” a Molfar report provided to the Kyiv Independent reads.
Iranian and Russian-made Shaheds have criss-crossed Ukrainian skies since late 2022. It is only more recently that Ukrainian deep strikes have been taking the fight to Russia.
As far back as May, one Ukrainian intelligence officer noted an information disparity, telling the Kyiv Independent, “while practically all of their hits on us are known, you have to add up our known strikes on them and multiply that number by two.”
Purported footage of the Saratov Oil Refinery in Saratov Oblast, Russia, during a Ukrainian strike overnight on Sept. 16, 2025. (General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces/Telegram)
The new blockages on social media, particularly Telegram, will complicate the work of data gatherers on Ukraine’s side of the line, like Maksym Khorolskyi, an OSINT analyst for Molfar Intelligence Firm. The Russian government’s tendency to hunt down and erase posts from social media particularly complicates his work.
“To ensure the relevance and completeness of data, you have to collect the necessary data before it is deleted, that is, react quicker and track down this information while it is still accessible,” said Khorolskyi.
Despite Russian origins, Telegram remains a go-to source of information about the war on the Ukrainian side for everyone from analysts to soldiers to regular citizens. While information controls make it impossible to tell exactly how many more Ukrainian drones are touching down today than a year ago, Khorolsky says that “a five or more times increase would definitely not be an exaggeration.”
The Russian government also depends on the “carte blanche” Russians give it for foreign affairs up to and including war in Ukraine in exchange for keeping internal order, Khorolsky explained to the Kyiv Independent.
“If Russian society gets more information about successful Ukrainian attacks inside of Russia, this definitely undermines that society’s faith in Russia’s omnipotence as a state, and in the situation on the battlefield.”
‘Massive explosion’ reported as Ukraine strikes Russian oil facilities in Bashkortostan, Volgograd Oblast
Long-range SBU drones struck an ELOU-AVT-4 crude oil processing unit at the center of the facility, triggering a “massive explosion,” an SBU source said.
