From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / October 4, 2025
When Russia launched its largest gas infrastructure attack, a French journalist died for his work, and Europe discovered the shadows had submarines
The Story of a Single Day
October 3, 2025, began in darkness and fire. Russia launched 416 missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight—the largest combined strike against Ukrainian gas infrastructure since the war began. Refineries burned 1,400 kilometers inside Russia. A French photojournalist died under a Russian drone near Druzhkivka, his “PRESS” vest offering no protection. Thirteen thousand pigs burned alive on a Kharkiv farm. And across the Baltic Sea, Danish intelligence revealed that Russian warships had been playing a deadly game of chicken with NATO vessels while jamming GPS signals and pointing weapons at helicopters.
These weren’t random acts of violence but coordinated elements of Russia’s escalating campaign. The gas infrastructure strikes aimed to freeze Ukrainian civilians. The journalist’s death sent a message to those documenting Russian war crimes. The harassment of Danish ships tested NATO’s resolve. The attacks on Russian refineries demonstrated Ukraine’s ability to strike back deep into enemy territory.
This was the 1,318th day of a war where the boundaries between military and civilian targets had dissolved, where critical infrastructure became a weapon, and where a photographer’s courage could end in a targeted assassination. On this single October day, the war’s essential brutality was on full display.
The Gas War: Russia’s Largest Infrastructure Strike
The attack began in the darkest hours before dawn. Russian forces launched 381 Shahed-type drones and 35 missiles from six different directions—Kursk, Bryansk, Oryol, Millerovo, Shatalovo, and Primorsk-Akhtarsk. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 303 drones and 17 missiles, but 78 drones and 18 missiles reached their targets across 15 locations.
The objective was clear and calculated: cripple Ukraine’s ability to heat homes as winter approached. Russian missiles and drones struck gas production facilities operated by Naftogaz in Kharkiv and Poltava oblasts with devastating precision. It was, as Naftogaz CEO Serhiy Koretskyi declared, “the most massive attack on our gas production infrastructure since the start of the full-scale war.”
“This was a combined strike involving 35 missiles, including a significant number of ballistic missiles, and 60 drones,” Koretskyi reported. “A significant part of the facilities was damaged, with some sites sustaining critical destruction.”
DTEK Naftogaz confirmed that several production facilities in Poltava region were forced to halt operations entirely. The State Emergency Service reported strikes damaging industrial enterprises and private homes across multiple communities. Windows blown out, roofs torn off, power lines severed. In some areas, debris from follow-up strikes even hit a fire truck, though emergency personnel escaped injury.
Voice of Ukraine 