Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refinery send smoke across Black Sea coast as state of emergency is declared

In the early hours of April 28, Ukrainian forces struck the oil infrastructure in Tuapse for the third time in two weeks. The first fire at the oil terminal burned for four days before it was extinguished. The second took five days to put out; local authorities said one person was killed and another was injured. The third wave of strikes hit a section of the Tuapse oil refinery that had not previously been targeted, as well as the marine terminal. Correspondents from the independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg traveled to Tuapse; they report on what this environmental disaster looks like up close. Meduza is publishing the piece in full.

Note: This text contains statements that may seem offensive (but are important for understanding the context). It also contains explicit language.

Smoke from the fire at the Tuapse oil refinery drifts over the sea, hanging along the coastline and reaching as far as Gizel-Dere and Shepsi — villages a few kilometers from Tuapse. A train traveling toward the city from the direction of Sochi passes through both of them.

According to satellite imagery, the smoke had spread at least 140 kilometers (87 miles) within the first hours after the latest Ukrainian strike. Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said authorities had begun evacuating residents from buildings on Koshkina and Pushkina streets and nearby alleyways close to the terminal “for safety reasons.” No clear statements about the drone attack or the scale of the environmental disaster in Tuapse have come from officials.

A stocky man with a khaki backpack and a girl of about 10 in a cap are looking out the compartment window at the approaching black sky. The daughter asks her father: “Is that fire there, red? Smoke? Are there drones lying around there? Can we take one as a souvenir? Are they still there?”

— They’ve already flown off, — the father answers. — Shot down.

— Can they [fly] to Magri too?

— No, there’s nothing they need there.

— What do they need in Tuapse?

— Oil.

— Why do the Ukrainians need oil?

— It’s just their tactic.

As the train pulls into the station, located across the river from the refinery, passengers take out their phones without prompting and photograph the smoke. They do not discuss what they see out the window.

Outside, the smell of burning hits immediately. For the first few minutes, breathing it in feels unfamiliar and unpleasant.

A man of about 50, in a windbreaker and cap, pushes his way fussily toward the station entrance, cursing loudly and filming the black column of smoke on his phone — a column from which flames periodically burst. There is no coherent thought in what he says. He seems simply shocked by what is happening.

Outside the station, taxi drivers wait for passengers, offering their services without much enthusiasm. They seem far more interested in resuming the conversation the train’s arrival interrupted.

“They say someone from the oil depot was guiding them [the drones] (presumably referring to a theoretical spotter — Bereg’s note). They circled and circled… And then one — whoosh! — and went [into a dive]…” — a taxi driver recounts a piece of urban legend that has already spread through the city.

The residents of Tuapse seem not to notice the black sky above their heads. Some are hurrying to work, others rushing to buy coffee and a quick breakfast at the stalls of the opening market.

The black puddles that appeared on the pavements after last week’s oil rain have already gone. Soot and black streaks are now visible only on light-colored surfaces — on signs and on the white stone of the monument to the Glorious Soviet Naval Sailors near the port.

Market vendors, coffee cups in hand, light up cigarettes and discuss the night’s raid. “There was fire up to the sky, and then from time to time even higher — these things, flames,” one trader says to another. “At night I hear bzzzzz and I say: ‘Right, get ready, there’s going to be a bang.’ And then bzzzzz again.”

— Got a cigarette? — a passerby asks me.

— Isn’t there enough smoke in the air for you?

He smirks: “Last night was terrifying. Drones flying constantly… But what’s there to be afraid of now? They’ll finish it [the oil depot] off, and then that’ll be that.”

When I ask what he thinks will happen to the sea because of the oil spill, he answers: “There probably won’t be a season.”

A saleswoman in a small café near the station says it is hard to work in the smoke. “What can you do? Masks don’t help,” she reflects, and offers a cheburek.

People in medical masks or respirators are rarely seen in Tuapse. Finding protective equipment in pharmacies nonetheless proves difficult. “No masks. We’re expecting a delivery today,” one explains. “No, they didn’t run out today. A few days ago.” A mask turns up only at the third pharmacy.

Karl Marx Street runs from the sea to Lenin Square not far from the port. It is more of a boulevard, and despite the burning smell in the air, it is crowded.

Teenagers are playing tag, families are out for walks, one Tuapse resident is doing push-ups off a bench, another is jogging. Grandmothers who have claimed the benches fuss over their grandchildren. Old men sit looking down at their feet. Young people are glued to their phones. Tourists browse souvenirs in small shops. Young workers in overalls paint booths: the smell of paint mingles with the burning.

From time to time, residents stop at Lenin Square and the intersections adjoining it, where the enormous column of smoke above the city is clearly visible and growing wider. They take out their phones and photograph the fire.

— Is it allowed to film? — I ask a Tuapse resident who, like me, is watching the people around her.

— I don’t know. It’s not really a secret anymore… — she answers indifferently.

— Aren’t you afraid of the smoke?

— I live in a different part of town. The smoke doesn’t reach our building: the wind is blowing the other way.

— Do you think any tourists will come this summer?

— Our people are bold. They might come.

A Tuapse resident who looks about 35, in a coat and sunglasses, spins around with her phone, filming a panorama with the fire in it. I ask her too whether filming is allowed. “Yes. Just don’t send it to anyone,” she answers. “To anyone.”

I try to photograph the column of smoke myself.

— Don’t film, don’t, — a politely elderly man in a light short jacket says to me. — Or they’ll come and take your phone. Don’t.

— But everyone else is filming…

— Well, they’re fools, — the pensioner explains. He walks briskly alongside me, leaning on a cane. — I’m a retired serviceman myself. I know. Don’t. This is our misfortune. And that’s exactly what the Ukes want — when people film.

The pensioner turns away from me and shouts jokingly to the woman who had been filming the panorama — she has stopped at an intersection and pointed her camera at the black sky: “Hey, young lady, we’re going to take your phone!” She laughs in response but walks away fairly quickly all the same.

Around this same time, Anastasia Troyanova, a journalist with the independent environmental outlet Kedr, is detained in Tuapse. When she is released from the Interior Ministry precinct roughly five hours later, it emerges that she was detained for photographing the fire.

“They spoke politely, but were interested in my work. As I understood it, right now across all of Tuapse they are looking for people who are posting footage of the fire on social media,” Troyanova told journalists. Such footage is spreading widely across social media and Telegram channels.

Two taxi drivers complain to each other that their cars are covered in soot again. “Well, I was clean yesterday,” says one, in glasses and with a gray beard.

Suddenly, muffled explosions ring out from the direction of the refinery. The column of smoke grows even larger and blacker, with enormous tongues of flame several hundred meters high flickering within it. The taxi drivers watch the fire as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

— Doesn’t this surprise you? — I ask.

— Noooo, — they answer almost in unison.

— It’s not the first time, — says the bearded one. — Last time it was the same [sounds]. That’s how they put it out.

A man in a jacket with a patch in the shape of the Russian flag crosses the road near Lenin Square. He looks at the smoke and spits on the ground at his feet. “Welcome, for fuck’s sake, to the resorts of Krasnodar Krai,” the man says, not really addressing anyone in particular.

The taxi drivers smirk. I ask them what is to be done about the beaches now. “What happened in Anapa — that was just diarrhea [compared to this],” the gray-bearded taxi driver reflects. “And have you heard about the dolphins? Yeah, it’s fucked for all the dolphins. They’ve already been finding them…”

Local media reported that on April 27 volunteers found dead dolphins on the Black Sea coast. According to ecologists, however, there is as yet no evidence that the animals died specifically because of the oil spill.

Volunteer chats are not going quiet: requests constantly appear there to buy more footwear or protective suits, to pick something up, to carry or deliver something. There are not enough hands to clean the shore of the oil that spilled as a result of the strikes.

On the Central Beach, machinery is at work and people in protective suits are shoveling oil into bags. Two washing stations have appeared in and around the city where stray animals that got covered in soot and oil after the oil rain of April 20 are being cleaned.

By midday the column of smoke grows even taller and wider.

— Oh fuck… A nuclear mushroom… — says a man coming out of a fast-food place with a shawarma in his hand, to his friend.

— I live behind the mountain — I thought it had gone off somewhere out at sea, — the friend answers. — And then a woman who lives there told me [it wasn’t]. They were evacuated. It’s just a volcano!

A Tuapse resident passing by is talking on the phone, complaining to the person on the other end that it is “impossible to go outside” from her building: the wind is carrying the smoke up to the top of the mountain where the residential neighborhoods are located. “All this smoke is settling on our mountain,” she explains.

On the embankment, a middle-aged man with a bandaged arm asks his young son to photograph him next to the large letters that spell out the word “Tuapse” — so that the smoke is visible in the background. On the case of his phone is a double-headed eagle and the Russian flag. I ask whether he is military. “No. Police,” the man says, somewhat embarrassed, and looks at the screen to see whether the photos came out.

An elderly woman passes me, hunched over. A few meters on, she stops abruptly and comes back:

— Young man, do you know that that mask of yours is only good for four hours? You need to change it after that! I work in a hospital. And in general, drink selenium. It flushes all the crap out of your body.

— Even this? — I point to the column of smoke behind her back, which by midday has become enormous.

— Even that.

I look at my watch. Time to change the mask. The sky is increasingly covered by a gray-black haze.

On the evening of April 28, a state of emergency is declared in the Tuapse municipal district. Boiling oil spilled out onto Koshkina Street.