On the night of May 23, Novorossiysk came under another drone attack. This time the strike hit two oil facilities at once: the Seshkaris sea terminal and the Grushova Balka oil depot, located approximately 12 km apart.
What is burning and where
The Grushova terminal belongs to ChernomorTransneft and is considered one of the largest oil storage facilities in the Caucasus — underground and above-ground reservoirs with a total capacity of approximately 1.2 million tons. Seshkaris is the endpoint of Transneft's main oil pipelines and directly connects to a sea pier for loading tankers.
The American satellite monitoring service NASA FIRMS detected active fires on the terminal grounds at 02:48. Local residents described bright flares and dense smoke visible from a great distance.
The official version — and what's wrong with it
The operational headquarters of Krasnodar Krai reported a fire in "several technical and administrative buildings" and attributed the cause to "debris from drones falling." Novorossiysk mayor Andrei Kravchenko clarified that two people were injured during the "repulsion of the attack."
"All night our military repelled a massive attack by Ukrainian drones. The strongest blow fell on Novorossiysk, where we introduced an emergency situation regime."
— Governor of Krasnodar Krai Veniamin Kondratyev
The term "debris" is standard Russian rhetoric for acknowledging a strike without admitting an air defense breach. OSINT analysis by Telegram channel ASTRA records heavy smoke over the reservoir farms of both terminals, which does not match the picture of a "single piece of debris."
Tactical context
Seshkaris has been targeted before — particularly in April 2025, when the Ukrainian General Staff confirmed a hit on the terminal's oil infrastructure, and in November 2025, a combined strike with Neptune missiles and drones, after which Novorossiysk temporarily suspended oil exports of approximately 2.2 million barrels. At that time, six of seven oil loading stands were damaged.
Strikes on Novorossiysk's oil logistics have direct economic logic: a significant portion of Russian oil exports to the Mediterranean passes through this port. Each halt in transshipment means a loss of foreign exchange revenues that finance the war.
- Grushova terminal: reservoirs with total capacity of ~1.2 million tons, part of the Seshkaris production complex
- Seshkaris terminal: endpoint of Transneft pipelines, sea outlet for tankers
- NASA FIRMS: satellite detected fire at 02:48 — several hours after the air alert was announced at 19:06
At the time of publication, there was no confirmation from the Ukrainian General Staff or SBU regarding this particular attack — without it, the scale of damage remains a matter of assessment rather than fact.
If the General Staff confirms damage to reservoir farms — rather than just "infrastructure" — it would mean a qualitatively different level of destruction: restoring reservoirs takes months, not weeks.
