Ukraine struck an oil terminal in the southern Russian port of Novorossiysk early Monday, the Ukrainian army said, several days after the U.S. was reported to have warned Kyiv not to attack its interests at the port.
“During the night of March 2, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces struck the Sheskharis oil terminal and the Novorossiysk naval base in Russia’s Krasnodar region,” the Ukrainian army said on Facebook.
“A large-scale fire has been recorded on the site.”
The attack wounded five people, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said in a post on Telegram, without mentioning the oil terminal.
A state of emergency was declared in the city, he added.
Unverified videos posted on Russian social media purported to show a fire burning at the port, as well as a projectile streaking across the night sky.
The Sheskharis oil terminal is one of the largest oil and petroleum transshipment complexes in southern Russia.
Ukraine previously hit the Sheskharis terminal last November, as well as the nearby Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal, which handles the bulk of Kazakhstan’s oil exports.
The CPC is partly owned by U.S. oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil, and handles up to 1% of the world’s oil supplies.
The U.S. State Department told Ukraine to stop attacking its interests at the port of Novorossiysk following those attacks last year, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States said last week, according to U.S. media reports.
It was not immediately clear when the United States made the warning, or which parts of the port it did not wish Ukraine to attack.
Novorossiysk handles around a fifth of Russia’s crude oil shipments and is the country’s largest export hub on the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s General Staff has previously said the Sheskharis facility supports Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense units intercepted and destroyed 172 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 67 over the Black Sea and 66 over the Krasnodar region.
Drones were also reported over Russian-annexed Crimea and the Belgorod, Kursk and Astrakhan regions.
The attack disrupted air traffic across southern Russia, with authorities delaying or canceling dozens of domestic and international flights at airports in Krasnodar, Sochi and Gelendzhik, including services to Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Dubai.
AFP contributed reporting.
