Drones came in low from the sea, and residents counted “more than a dozen loud explosions over the course of two hours,” Ukrainska Pravda reported. It was the night of April 27 into April 28, and Tuapse was under attack for the third time in under two weeks.
By morning the oil refinery was burning. Eyewitness video suggested the tank farm beside the ELOU-AVT-12 unit had taken hits, the outlet said. Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed the strike, according to the Kyiv Independent, and called the facility one that was “involved in supplying the Russian Federation’s occupation army on Ukrainian territory”. Local officials told a different story. The Krasnodar Krai emergency headquarters put the fire down to “the fall of drone debris” and reported no casualties.
Fire crews and an evacuation
Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said 164 personnel and 46 fire appliances were working at the site. “An evacuation is under way,” he announced, with a nearby school serving as temporary shelter. Meduza, quoting independent journalists on the ground, said the evacuations covered buildings near the marine terminal and that the new strike hit a part of the refinery not struck before. Satellite imagery showed the smoke traveling at least 87 miles in a matter of hours.
Warnings of an air raid had gone out first, and flights were limited at the airports of Krasnodar, Gelendzhik and Sochi. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had shot down 186 Ukrainian drones over southern regions and Crimea.
A refinery that had barely stopped burning
The earlier hits were on April 16 and April 20. Reuters reported that the second came only hours after a blaze from the first had been put out. That attack killed at least one man at the port, Russian officials said, and Kondratiev said another was injured, while drone debris damaged a kindergarten, a primary school, a church and an apartment block. Tuapse is a major oil product export hub, and its refinery belongs to Rosneft.
After the April 20 attack, Ukrainian military reports spoke of “24 storage tanks” destroyed and four more damaged. The first fire had been contained, then reignited. Meduza said earlier fires lasted four and five days.
Life under the smoke
Meduza’s account from the town is less about military hardware than about nerves. At pharmacies, masks had run out. “No masks. We’re expecting a delivery today,” one clerk said. A pensioner cautioned a reporter: “Don’t film, don’t… Or they’ll come and take your phone.” The warning was not idle. Anastasia Troyanova, an environmental journalist, was picked up after photographing the fire. She was held about five hours.
As the day went on, new explosions thickened the smoke column, and flames flickered hundreds of meters high. On Central Beach, men in protective suits scooped up the spilled oil. Toward evening, boiling oil ran onto Koshkina Street and authorities declared a state of emergency across the municipal district of Tuapse.
Sources
- Ukraine confirms 3rd devastating drone strike on Russia's Tuapse oil refinery (Kyiv Independent)
- Drones again attack oil refinery in Russia's Tuapse, sparking huge fire; residents evacuated (Ukrainska Pravda)
- Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refinery send smoke across Black Sea coast (Meduza)
- Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Tuapse port kills one (Reuters via Straits Times)
