Russian officials said a fire broke out at a terminal in Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse after an attack by Ukrainian drones on Friday, the fourth such strike in just over two weeks.
A total of 143 personnel and 25 pieces of firefighting equipment were deployed to contain the blaze, according to Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of the Krasnodar region, where the city is located.
“The situation is under control,” he said in a Telegram post. “Every effort is being made to prevent oil spill in the sea.”
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces attacked the Tuapse refinery located near the terminal, causing an explosion and fire. The extent of the damage was being assessed, it said in a Telegram statement.
Russia declared a regional emergency earlier this week in Tuapse, a city of more than 60,000 people that’s home to one of the country’s largest Black Sea ports and the refinery owned by energy giant Rosneft PJSC. That followed repeated drone strikes that began on April 16.
Ukrainian attacks resulted in a halt to operations at the port and the refinery, with each fire taking several days to extinguish. A blaze that began April 28 from a strike on the refinery was extinguished only on Thursday.
Earlier attacks caused an oil-product spill in the Tuapse River and coastal area. Officials said Friday that more than 13,000 cubic meters of oil-contaminated soil and oil-water mixture had been collected from three cleanup sites, roughly equivalent to more than five Olympic-size swimming pools.
Local authorities also have been grappling with polluted rain and high levels of toxic substances in the air after the fires. They’ve advised residents against using unfiltered water and going outside.
Overnight, Russia attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure and residential areas with 210 drones, injuring five people in Odesa, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a post on X Friday. Thousands of families were left without power in Kharkiv region due to shelling that also damaged rail infrastructure, he said.
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