The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) carried out another drone strike overnight on May 1 against the sea terminal in Tuapse. According to RTVI, at least two storage tanks caught fire on the territory of the Tuapse oil refinery as a result of the attack. Photos from the scene show thick black smoke. The outlet reports that the terminal itself lost power, and the city is also experiencing a large-scale electricity outage. There is a complete blackout in the city center, and internet services are also down.
This is already the fourth attack on the terminal in Tuapse over the past two weeks. The fire from the previous strike, which occurred on April 28, was extinguished only the day before, on Thursday. Burning нефтепродукты (oil products) from the refinery spilled into the streets.
The facility was also targeted on April 16 and 20. In both cases, the fires took around four days to extinguish. The city experienced so-called “oil rains,” with concentrations of benzene, xylene, and soot in the air exceeding permissible levels several times over. Smog spread as far as Sochi, Anapa, Armavir, and Stavropol. In addition, damage to the storage tanks caused oil products to leak into a river and the Black Sea. Within a week, the pollution slick stretched 77 kilometers along the coastline.
Due to the attacks, the refinery — owned by Rosneft and among the top ten largest in Russia — has not been operating since April 16. According to the General Staff of the AFU, during the first two attacks alone, 24 storage tanks were destroyed and another four damaged.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the situation in Tuapse — described by environmentalists as a “major environmental disaster” — only on April 28. At that time, he instructed Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov to travel to the city. At the same time, Putin stated that there were no “serious threats” related to the incident.
