/Reuters Agency
A Ukrainian drone attack damaged at least two foreign vessels and the infrastructure of the oil terminal in the strategic Russian port of Tuapse, on the Black Sea, as Kyiv attempts to weaken Russia’s war effort by attacking its energy infrastructure.
For several months, Ukraine has been striking Russian refineries, storage depots, and pipelines in an attempt to impact the Russian economy, and some media have reported that Western intelligence agencies have assisted Kyiv in these attacks.
Russian authorities reported that two foreign vessels were damaged in the attack on Tuapse, one of the largest oil terminals on the Black Sea, which caused a fire.
“As a result of the drone attack on the Port of Tuapse on the night of November 2, two foreign civilian vessels were damaged,” the emergency operations center of the Krasnodar region said in a statement.
Unverified images on Russian and Ukrainian Telegram news channels appeared to show a terminal and a tanker on fire during the night. Reuters could not independently verify these reports.
The operations center indicated that there were no casualties among the ships’ crews and that all fires were extinguished, although “the buildings and infrastructure of the terminal” suffered damage.
Ukrainian forces carried out a drone attack on the Tuapse oil terminal, an official from the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reported on Sunday. The official stated that five drone hits struck a tanker, loading infrastructure, and nearby port buildings.
The port houses the Tuapse Black Sea oil terminal and a refinery controlled by Rosneft, which has been the target of several drone attacks by Ukraine this year.
It was not immediately known if the terminal was still operating after the attack, which, according to the administration, damaged its buildings and other infrastructure.
The Tuapse plant, which is export-oriented and has a processing capacity of 240,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd), produces naphtha, fuel oil, vacuum gas oil, and high-sulfur diesel. Its main supply destinations are China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey.
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday that air defense units destroyed a total of 283 Ukrainian drones. Ukraine did not issue immediate comments on the attack.
Kyiv states that its drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure are retaliation for Russian bombings of its power grid. Russia has been striking Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure.
Nearly 60,000 people were left without power after a Russian night air attack in the Zaporizhzhia region, on the war front, while two people died in the southern Odesa region, Ukrainian authorities reported on Sunday.
Drone debris was found in five localities of the Tuapse municipal district, which damaged windows in some apartments and houses. No injuries were reported, although the Tuapse train station suffered some minor damage, the regional administration stated.
The night attack forced the temporary closure of dozens of Russian airports, mainly in the south and west of the country, for security reasons, Russia’s aviation regulator, Rosaviatsiya, reported on Telegram.
