Ukrainian military officials reported carrying out a drone strike on the Russian missile carrier "Admiral Makarov" and a drilling rig at the port of Novorossiysk. Ukraine's drone forces commander Robert Brovdi stated on Monday that the attack targeted Russia's largest oil exporting outlet on the Black Sea. Ukraine has intensified its assaults on Russian energy infrastructure in an attempt to disrupt export revenues that allegedly fund Moscow's war efforts.
Russian authorities said at least eight people, including two children, were injured in Novorossiysk, without specifying if the port was hit. Videos posted on Telegram and verified by Al Jazeera's verification unit showed a fire at one of the oil port's docks in the city. Novorossiysk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko said debris from drones fell on two locations, including a residential area.
Russia's military claimed early Monday that air defense units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period. It added that emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households affected by outages linked to air attacks. The area of Novorossiysk port also hosts the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan and whose shareholders include US majors such as Chevron and ExxonMobil.
Ukraine has significantly escalated attacks on Russia's energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs on both the Baltic and Black Seas, as it seeks to reduce Moscow's revenues from oil sales, purportedly the lifeblood of its economy. The Kremlin has attempted to boost exports after US President Donald Trump granted it a temporary waiver from sanctions to ease supply constraints, as the US-Israeli war on Iran upends oil markets following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Kyiv officials complain that Russia will use the additional revenue on new weapons to hit Ukraine harder.
Later on Monday, Russia reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked the CPC terminal. The export facility, which handles 1.5 percent of global oil supply, reported damage to mooring, loading, and storage infrastructure, according to the Reuters news agency. Russia's defense ministry said in a statement: "The Kyiv regime deliberately attacked facilities of the international oil transportation company Caspian Pipeline Consortium in order to inflict maximum economic damage on its largest shareholders – energy companies from the United States and Kazakhstan."
The Black Sea strikes came a day after Ukrainian drones hit Russia's Baltic Sea port of Primorsk – one of Russia's main oil exporting outlets – and the NORSI oil refinery in the central Nizhny Novgorod region. Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia's northwestern Leningrad region, said a fuel reservoir in the Primorsk port area leaked when struck by shrapnel. Ukrainian drones also repeatedly struck Russia's Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga last month, damaging several buildings in the sprawling complex of oil-processing facilities and export terminals.
In Ukraine, a Russian overnight drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa on Monday killed two women and a toddler, authorities said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated in a post on X that 16 people were wounded, including a pregnant woman and two children. Zelenskyy added that Russia's overnight strikes also hit energy infrastructure in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipro regions. More than 300,000 households were without electricity in the northern Chernihiv region after distribution facilities were damaged in attacks, according to the regional power utility. The Ukrainian leader said that over the past week, Russia launched at Ukraine more than 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 powerful glide bombs, and more than 40 missiles of various types.
Source: www.aljazeera.com