Cluster drone strike kills at least 13 in Russia as Thames Water pays £1m signing bonus

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A Ukrainian drone strike on the industrial city of Nizhnekamsk, deep inside Russia's Tatarstan region, has killed at least 13 people, according to the local mayor, in what would rank among the deadliest attacks on Russian soil since Moscow's full-scale invasion began in 2022. Kyiv said its forces had targeted the Taneco oil refinery, some 750 miles (1,200km) from the Ukrainian border, as part of a wider campaign to degrade what its general staff described as the “military potential of the Russian aggressor”. Footage shared online showed drones flying low over the city's Soviet-era apartment blocks and plumes of black smoke rising from an industrial zone on its outskirts.

Tatarstan's regional head, Rustam Minnikhanov, said a drone had struck a hostel, killing nine people, and released images of a badly damaged building; Russian investigators said both civilian and industrial sites had been affected and opened a criminal case on suspicion of terrorism, while Minnikhanov declared a day of mourning. The Uzbek consulate said seven of the dead were Uzbek nationals. Taneco, owned by the firm Tatneft, is one of Russia's largest and most modern refineries and sits alongside a rubber and petrochemicals plant; the same area was struck by Ukraine in June. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy defended the long-range campaign as “entirely justified”, saying Russia would increasingly feel the war “at their own home” until Moscow agreed to end the fighting. Russia's defence ministry said it had shot down 456 Ukrainian drones over its territory, and separately reported drones falling on an industrial site in the Tyumen region of western Siberia, roughly 1,500 miles from the front, underlining how Kyiv's strikes—also hitting warehouses belonging to the retailer Wildberries and tankers in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea—are increasingly aimed at squeezing Russia's oil revenues and broader war economy.

In an unrelated development, Thames Water has confirmed it paid its chief financial officer, Steve Buck, a £1m signing-on payment in July, months after he joined the heavily indebted utility in April 2025, with the money released only after the company had taken legal advice on its contractual obligations. The payment, first disclosed by Sky News, came to light through a letter from Thames Water's chairman, Sir Adrian Montague, to MPs on the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. Sir Adrian acknowledged that customers would likely view such payments as “unjust” but argued they were a “necessary incentive” to stop experienced staff—brought in to fix problems they did not cause—from being poached by rivals offering less scrutiny and better pay; he said the money came from emergency funding supplied by the company's lenders and warned that recruitment and retention difficulties would persist, or worsen, if Thames Water were nationalised or placed into special administration.

The disclosure drew swift criticism. Downing Street's spokesperson called it “unacceptable” for one of the worst-performing water companies to be making large payouts to executives instead of focusing on performance and rebuilding trust, noting that bonuses for polluting water bosses have been banned and that firms are expected to follow the spirit as well as the letter of the rules. Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, who chairs the relevant Commons committee, said money should be going towards improving services rather than topping up well-paid executives, and pressed ministers on why their stated intention to stop such payments had not been delivered. Ofwat has also weighed in, with an executive director warning in a July blog post that public trust is damaged by opaque “retention” payments, and stating that companies must justify such awards to the regulator. The controversy comes as Thames Water, which owes around £20bn, continues negotiating emergency financing with creditors and the government; the company's own newsroom update from mid-July detailed a separate liquidity arrangement, confirming lenders had committed a further £823m towards a super-senior facility, with total commitments expected to reach £3bn once a second funding tranche is allocated, underscoring the scale of the financial rescue effort under way alongside the row over executive pay.

Where outlets differ

The Guardian frames the Nizhnekamsk strike within Ukraine's broader strategy of economic strangulation, citing Zelenskyy's own words and giving most space to context (past strikes, Siberian refineries, Wildberries warehouses); it does not provide a final confirmed death toll figure beyond the mayor's count and Minnikhanov's hostel figure.

The BBC's Thames Water report focuses on political and regulatory reaction (No 10, Ofwat, the Lib Dems) and the company's justification for the payment, while Thames Water's own newsroom statement (Source 3) is a technical financing update about the super-senior facility and Accordion tranches, making no mention of the Buck payment at all — it offers financial-market detail rather than the executive pay controversy.

Casualty attribution differs slightly: the Guardian source cites the mayor for the overall toll of at least 13 but attributes the more specific hostel death count of nine to Tatarstan's regional head, alongside the Uzbek consulate's claim that seven victims were Uzbek nationals — these figures come from Russian and Uzbek officials rather than independently verified counts.

• www.theguardian.com
• www.bbc.co.uk
• www.thameswater.co.uk