A Ukrainian drone attack damaged at least two foreign vessels and the oil terminal infrastructure at Russia’s key Black Sea port of Tuapse on Sunday, as Kyiv tries to undermine Russia’s war effort by targeting its energy infrastructure.
For several months, Ukraine has been striking Russian oil refineries, depots and pipelines in a bid to undermine the Russian economy, and some media have reported that Western intelligence agencies have helped Kyiv with the strikes.
Russian authorities said two foreign vessels were damaged in the attack on Tuapse, one of the biggest oil terminals on the Black Sea, sparking a fire.
“As a result of the drone attack on the port of Tuapse on the night of November 2, two foreign civilian ships were damaged,” the emergency operational headquarters of the Krasnodar region said in a statement.
Unverified footage on Russian and Ukrainian social media appeared to show a terminal and a tanker ablaze at night. Journalists could not independently verify the reports.
The operational headquarters said that there were no casualties among the crews of the ships and that all fires had been extinguished but that “the buildings and infrastructure of the terminal” had sustained damage.
Ukraine’s forces carried out a drone attack on the Tuapse oil terminal, an official from Ukraine’s SBU domestic security service said on Sunday. The official said five drone strikes had hit an oil tanker, loading infrastructure and nearby port buildings.