Ukrainian drones set fire to Lukoil's Kstovo refinery, one of Russia's largest gasoline producers

A drone attack overnight started a fire at Lukoil's refinery in Kstovo, in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region, according to the Kyiv Independent. Ukraine has attacked the plant several times. The Kyiv Independent says a confirmed strike on August 26 caused a large fire and forced the refinery, known as NORSI, to suspend operations. Ukrainian outlets citing residents' videos reported explosions from about 1 a.m. Moscow time that continued for several hours. They described the plant as Russia's fourth-largest refinery, with design capacity of about 17 million tonnes a year, and a major source of gasoline. Russian official statements on damage were not available in the reports reviewed.

Russia struck the other side's administrative centers. A Russian air strike destroyed the city executive committee building in Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian-held city in the Donetsk region, Ukraine's state agency Ukrinform reported.

The conflict also reached Russia's state data systems. The business daily Kommersant reported that hackers broke into the website of Rosstat, the Federal State Statistics Service, overnight. They left a message in Belarusian that read "No one will escape responsibility." No group had claimed the attack in Kommersant's report.

The two sides did agree on one local exception. Russian state broadcaster RT reported from Oleshky, which Russian sources call Alyoshki, where more than 750 civilians have been evacuated under what it called a rare six-day Russia-Ukraine truce. Al Jazeera described evacuees reaching Ukrainian-controlled territory starved and exhausted after months of isolation. RT presented the truce as Russian humanitarian work, and Ukrainian outlets presented the evacuation as escape from occupation.