KYIV / ROSTOV-ON-DON — Ukraine's Naval Forces struck three facilities involved in making, storing and repairing Russian military drones in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don overnight on November 12 to 13, using Neptune cruise missiles fired from a coastal missile system, Ukraine's General Staff said on Friday, November 13.

Source: Kyiv Post

The three targets named by the General Staff were a production facility of Ionos LLC, which makes tactical-level attack drones; a separate warehouse storing the same company's drones; and a service centre run by Aero-Hit LLC. Aero-Hit manufactures the Veles first-person-view (FPV) strike and reconnaissance drones at its production sites in Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East, and its Rostov-on-Don centre repairs and maintains drones used by the Russian army on the front line.

Source: UNITED24 Media

The General Staff presented the attack as a blow to the whole drone supply chain at once — manufacture, storage and repair. Reports of its statement quoted it as saying: "Part of the drones will not be produced, part burned in the warehouse, and damaged drones will not return to the front for a long time."

What the Russian side has said

Yuriy Slyusar, the governor of Rostov Oblast, reported a fire at an unnamed industrial building in Rostov-on-Don that night. He said 120 Ukrainian drones were destroyed over the city and another 10 across the wider region — his own figures, for which the reports give no independent count. Russian authorities have not confirmed that the specific Ionos or Aero-Hit sites were destroyed, and the published reports include no independent damage assessment of the three sites.

Part of a wider strike campaign

Rostov-on-Don lies roughly 200 kilometres from the front line, according to the Institute for the Study of War, which recorded the General Staff's report in its November 13 assessment of the war. The strike is the latest in a series of Neptune attacks on Russian military-industrial targets — Kyiv Post lists the Marinovka airfield on October 29 and the Proton-Elektroteks plant in Oryol on November 7 — as Ukraine continues its campaign against the factories and depots behind Russia's own drone and missile war.

Source: Institute for the Study of War

What happens next: the reports do not say how many drones were lost at the three sites, what the Ionos plant's output was, or when production or repairs could resume. Any firmer picture of the damage is likely to depend on satellite imagery or a further statement from either side — until then, the strike stands as a Ukrainian claim, partly matched by a Russian report of a fire, and nothing more definite.