Key developments on Oct. 16:
- Drone attack sparks fire at industrial facility in Russia's Surgut district, governor says
- Pope Leo urges Putin to allow humanitarian aid, evacuations from Russian-occupied Oleshky
- Ukrainian military strikes million-dollar Russian radar in Krasnodar Krai, General Staff claim
- Zelensky's ask: 300 Patriot missiles, 70 billion euros, and Russian assets
- Emergency blackouts in Kyiv, as Klitschko announces start of heating season
A fire broke out at an industrial facility in Russia's Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District following a drone attack, regional governor Ruslan Kukharuk said on Oct. 16, while Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko said the facility was the Surgut Condensate Stabilization Plant.
"As a result of a drone attack on an industrial facility in the Surgut district, a fire broke out. Emergency services are working at the scene," Kukharuk said.
He added that specialists were assessing the scale and nature of the damage. Kukharuk did not identify the facility or say who was responsible for the attack.
"The Defense Forces struck the Surgut Condensate Stabilization Plant," Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian activist and volunteer who previously served as an adviser to then-Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, said. The facility is located more than 2,400 kilometers (1,490 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
In videos shared by Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova, a large fire and thick dark smoke can be seen on the territory of an industrial facility.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify that the facility reportedly hit was the Surgut Condensate Stabilization Plant. Ukrainian officials have not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Surgut plant processes gas condensate and produces petroleum products, including motor and aviation fuel. Its designed processing capacity reaches 12 million metric tons of raw materials per year, Sternenko said.
The reported strike comes amid a dispute between Kyiv and Washington over Ukrainian attacks on Russia's oil and energy infrastructure.
U.S. President Donald Trump has blamed Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries for rising global fuel prices, a claim disputed by energy experts. His administration also threatened to cut intelligence sharing and weapons support unless Kyiv stopped targeting Russian energy facilities, according to Ukrainian and European officials.
On Oct. 9, Trump announced a deal allowing Russia to supply diesel fuel to the U.S. and global markets despite sanctions imposed following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia subsequently eased restrictions on diesel exports.
Two days later, Trump announced what he described as an "energy ceasefire" between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian officials said Kyiv had not been informed of the agreement in advance.
Ukraine initially halted strikes on Russian refineries following the announcement, while Russia continued attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. On Oct. 15, Zelensky said that Kyiv had lifted the pause due to Moscow's continued attacks.
"The block is out. We're done," Zelensky said.
Pope Leo urges Putin to allow humanitarian aid, evacuations from Russian-occupied Oleshky
Pope Leo expressed concern over the worsening humanitarian crisis in Russian-occupied Oleshky in Ukraine's Kherson Oblast during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 16, the Vatican said.
The pope called for a local ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid deliveries and the safe evacuation of civilians from the front-line city, where around 2,000 residents remain trapped amid severe shortages of food and medicine.
Despite Russia's failure to cooperate with evacuation efforts, Putin blamed Ukraine for the crisis in Oleshky.
"Putin provided the pope with detailed explanations of the Kyiv regime's responsibility for the humanitarian situation in Oleshky," Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Oleshky is an occupied front-line city on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, where civilians live amid a Russian military presence and attacks from both Ukrainian and Russian forces.
The humanitarian situation has worsened since the summer, as evacuation efforts have come to a halt. Continued attacks have made it increasingly difficult to deliver essential food and medicine.
Ukraine had prepared an evacuation mission, with the International Committee of the Red Cross ready to participate and Ukrainian forces preparing to observe a ceasefire, according to Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets. Russia, however, had not confirmed its willingness to proceed, he said.
The call came as Leo remains hospitalized in Rome after undergoing surgery for lung cancer on Oct. 13. It was his second known phone conversation with Putin since becoming pope in 2025.
Ukrainian military strikes million-dollar Russian radar in Krasnodar Krai, General Staff claim
The Ukrainian military struck a Russian Nebo-U radar near the settlement of Magri, in Krasnodar Krai, on the night of Oct. 16, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.
"The Nebo-U is a long-range, three-coordinate radar designed to detect and track aerial assets, including aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles," the General Staff said in a statement.
"Striking such systems reduces the enemy's ability to monitor airspace and detect aerial assets in time. The estimated cost of the radar station is about US $100 million," they said.
The General Staff did not give details about what Ukrainian munition was used to carry out the strike.
A day prior, an overnight attack on the Borisoglebsk military airfield in Russia's Voronezh region carried out with the Neptune coastal missile system hit six Su-34M bomber jets, destroying four and damaging two, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Oct. 15.
On Aug. 23, Ukrainian drones struck two Russian fighter jets, a large missile-carrying drone, high-value radars, and other air defense assets in Krasnodar Krai, Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert "Magyar" Brovdi said then.
Krasnodar Krai, a strategic region along Russia's Black Sea coast, has increasingly come under Ukrainian drone attacks as Kyiv extends the range of its strikes deep into Russian territory.
Zelensky's ask: 300 Patriot missiles, 70 billion euros, and Russian assets
BRUSSELS, Belgium — President Volodymyr Zelensky used his appearance at the Oct. 16 summit of EU leaders in Brussels to list the main things Kyiv needs to survive the winter and beyond, but those asks won't come cheap.
"I am grateful for your support for Ukraine," Zelensky told EU leaders.
"Without a determined European Union capable of making strong decisions Putin would have gone much further by now," Zelensky said.
But with Russia ramping up its use of ballistic missiles and jet-powered Shahed drones to pummel Kyiv, and the U.S. taking steps to undermine Russia sanctions and Ukrainian security, Zelensky also came to the bloc with new requests for help.
"We need a winter package... 300 Patriot interceptors specifically against ballistic missiles," Zelensky said.
The U.S.-made Patriot are considered the only technology currently capable of consistently taking down Russian ballistic missiles, and several European countries still hold stocks of them, such as Spain and Greece.
But for Spain, European diplomats have told the Kyiv Independent that there is a real fear that Madrid will not receive any more Patriot missiles in the future because of U.S. President Donald Trump's personal dislike for Spain's center-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Greece on the other hand has a visceral fear that depleting its own supplies of Patriots might be perceived as a sign of weakness by neighboring Turkey, which Athens fears Ankara would act upon by annexing Greek islands near the Turkish coast.
Likewise, Ukraine's demand to "deal with the frozen assets," unsettles several countries around the table.
Using the 200 billion euros ($227 billion) of Russian assets immobilized within the EU to support Ukraine came up in late 2025, but consensus on the idea was out of reach.
"We need something like a special EU-controlled custodian to reduce the risk of them being unfrozen and divided up among those who clearly do not want what is best for Europe or an end to this war," Zelensky said.
Aside from the fears of holders of those assets, principally Belgium, about Russian retaliation for such a move, several European countries also fear that entering into such appropriations could fracture the global financial system, as countries move their wealth only into jurisdictions deemed friendly to them.
For Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, touching those assets remains very much a no-go.
"My personal view is that if you have immobilized assets, like in every war, even the Second World War, they were never touched. But at the end of a conflict, there's always a peace deal. And part of this peace deal is the use of immobilized assets," De Wever told journalists at a press conference during the night of Oct. 15.
"Are there people on this planet who maybe dream of doing it differently this time and operationalizing those assets earlier? ... Yes, there are ... Do I want to talk about it? No, I don't," De Wever said.
And the risk of Russia's assets being returned, despite some wishful thinking from the U.S. that Europe would hand them over, is nonexistent. The EU bound itself in December 2025, so that any vote to unfreeze the Russian immobilized assets must be unanimous.
"Nobody could ever dream of operationalizing those immobilized assets without unanimity here around the table," De Wever said.
On top of requesting the Russian assets, Zelensky also asked the EU to fill Kyiv's budget hole for 2027.
"The war will cost 155 billion euros ($174.5 billion) next year. And we need at least 70 billion euros ($78.8 billion) more from you," Zelensky said.
"This is a realistic amount and I ask you to find this support. It will help us hold Russia back," he added.
But the request for 70 billion euros comes only six months after the bloc approved a 90 billion euro loan to help Ukraine until the end of 2027. The idea was always that third countries would step in to help bridge the remaining gap, but so far only Norway has done so.
And the government has been notoriously unclear at communicating its financial needs, as noted earlier that day by Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker.
However, Zelensky's estimate of a 70 billion euro shortfall does match the estimated shortfall figure that a senior EU official familiar with Ukraine's financial situation shared with the Kyiv Independent.
On all three requests, even if they land on sympathetic ears, a decision would still not be expected the same day.
And because there is nonetheless a European consensus to support Ukraine, the demands are very likely to dominate discussions in Brussels over the next weeks.
Emergency blackouts in Kyiv, as Klitschko announces start of heating season
Emergency blackouts were implemented across Kyiv due to Russian attacks on the city's energy infrastructure, Ukraine's biggest private energy firm DTEK said on Oct. 16, as Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced the start of the city's heating season.
"We remind you that during emergency shutdowns, schedules are not valid," DTEK said. Kyiv already operates under scheduled power outages, allowing residents to plan their days around them, but Russian attacks on the city's energy infrastructure led to additional emergency power outages over the past weeks.
On the same day, Klitschko announced that Kyiv's centralised heating system will be turned on, starting with social institutions such as schools, hospitals, and kindergartens. The decision was sparked by "extreme conditions" created by constant bombardment, Klitschko said.
Two areas of the city, the Dniprovskyi and Darnytskyi districts, would not have their centralised heating switched on due to "significant damage" to a power facility in the area, Klitschko said, while repair efforts were ongoing.
Kyiv, a city the size of Berlin, is home to over 3 million people, with average temperatures of -4.6 degrees Celsius to -1 degrees Celsius (23.7 degrees Fahrenheit to 30 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter months.
In Kyiv Oblast, Buchanan, Obukhiv, and Fastiv districts were also experiencing emergency blackouts, DTEK said.
In Western Ukraine, the city of Lutsk was left without power, Andriy Razumovsky, secretary of Lutsk City Council, announced on social media.
"Due to an attack by enemy drones, the city was left without electricity. Utilities are operating on backup power sources," Razumovsky said.
Overnight on Oct. 13 to 14, Russia launched a large-scale ballistic missile attack on Kyiv, wreaking destruction in a residential neighborhood and targeting several energy facilities in Kyiv.
Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said that all three of the city's combined heat and power stations were attacked, as well as critical infrastructure in the Kyiv Oblast that provide power to Kyiv and central regions.
"The targets of Russian ballistic missiles were power system facilities in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and the region," he said.
"Overnight, the Russians deployed 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 strike drones and loitering munitions against our energy and critical infrastructure in Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, and Kharkiv," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on social media on Oct.14, adding that 600,000 people were left without power.