For most of the war, Russia's Arctic was the part of the map nobody bothered to defend. That changed a month ago.
On September 9, Ukraine's Special Operations Forces said their drones flew "more than 3,000 kilometers" to hit two gas condensate plants in the Yamalo-Nenets region: Gazprom's Novy Urengoy condensate treatment plant, with a design capacity of 19.5 million tons of feedstock a year, and Novatek's Purovsky plant near Tarko-Sale, which processed 13.4 million tons of condensate in 2025 (Hromadske, Al Jazeera). "Until today, this was considered an absolutely safe rear area for the aggressor," the SOF said. Bloomberg and Reuters both picked up the claim; the Kremlin's envoy to the Urals, Artem Zhoga, confirmed it was the first attack to reach the Arctic.
On Tuesday Moscow gave its answer: cash. The Yamalo-Nenets government approved a payment of 1 million rubles (about $11,700) for every drone destroyed over the region, the highest bounty any Russian region has offered, according to TASS (others pay 20,000-200,000 rubles). The money goes to local "mobile fire groups," and there is a catch: per the READ MORE AT SOURCE »
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