On the night of April 20, Ukrainian drones carried out a mass attack on the seaport of Tuapse, said Governor of Krasnodar Krai Veniamin Kondratyev.
“A man was killed. <…> Another person was injured and is receiving all necessary medical assistance,” Kondratyev wrote on Telegram.
According to Astra, the target of the drones was the Tuapse oil refinery owned by Rosneft. After the strike, a large fire broke out in the facility’s tank farm. The refinery had already been attacked less than a week earlier, on April 16. The fire then took three days to extinguish and was only fully put out the previous afternoon. More than 150 people and 49 units of equipment were involved in firefighting efforts.
The Tuapse refinery is the only oil refinery on Russia’s Black Sea coast and is among the top ten largest in the country. It has a processing capacity of up to 12 million tons per year. The plant is fully export-oriented and does not supply gasoline or diesel to the domestic market.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have increasingly focused since last year on strikes against Russia’s energy infrastructure. Following the start of the U.S. war against Iran, attacks reportedly expanded to Russian ports used for oil and petroleum exports. In March, Russia’s largest Baltic ports—Primorsk and Ust-Luga—which account for up to 40% of Russia’s seaborne oil exports, were repeatedly targeted. Ukrainian drones also struck the major oil terminal at the port of Novorossiysk, “Sheskharis.” The Tuapse refinery is directly connected to the oil terminals of the Tuapse port.
