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An unmanned surface vessel struck an oil pier in the southern Russian port of Tuapse earlier today, videos of the explosion circulating on social media show.
Eyewitnesses published footage of the attack. In the footage, attempts to fire on the drone can be heard, but they fail to stop it from reaching its target. The Insider geolocated the site of the strike, which was later confirmed by the Ukrainian OSINT project CyberBoroshno (lit. “CyberFlour”).
Over the summer it was reported that Russian authorities planned to increase exports of petroleum products from the Tuapse port by 3.2% to 1.068 million tons in August, with an additional 6.2% increase to 1.098 million tons in September.
Diagram of the Tuapse port from a report by the Eurasian Union of Scientists. The red cross marks the site of the strike.
Earlier on Sept. 24, the key Russian port in Novorossiysk was also attacked by Ukrainian drones, leaving two people dead and up to six others wounded. Bloomberg reported that two terminals there suspended oil shipments following the strikes. Together, those terminals account for more than 2 million barrels per day of Russian and Kazakh oil exports.
Amid the attacks on Sept. 24, Andrey Proshunin, the mayor of the Russian Black Sea resort town Sochi, said that vacationers were being evacuated from beaches in the Krasnodar “as a precaution.” He assured that the situation in his city was “normal,” and that the authorities would activate alert systems in case of a “real threat.”