So, like, the authorities in Russia’s Black Sea region Novorossiysk were all like, “Yo, there was this huge fire and explosions at a fuel storage site, but it was totally an accident, not those Ukrainian drones everyone’s talking about.” Like, official statements and news reports were all over that, you know? The fire started in a diesel fuel reservoir in this industrial area near Kirillovka, a suburb of Novorossiysk, like around mid-evening on Monday. It spread to a parking lot and torched five cars, but thankfully, nobody got hurt, according to Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor of Novorossiysk. He spilled the beans in a statement to the local media early Tuesday morning.
Images were floating around on Russian social media on Tuesday showing the fire at the fuel storage site in Kirillovka, near Novorossiysk. The officials were all, “Yeah, it was just an accident, no biggie.” The social media posts had pics of flames shooting up higher than five-story buildings, and some peeps were saying there were explosions. Firefighters and emergency crews from Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations (RMES) rushed to the scene as soon as they heard about the fuel reservoir going up in flames. They managed to put out all the fires by midnight, according to an RMES statement.
Local news agencies were all up in it, citing eyewitnesses and images from the scene, talking about how this diesel fuel storage facility run by Ufineft got wrecked in the fire. Like, five cars on the site were totalled, man. There were no legit reports about Ukrainian drones being involved in the whole situation.
Now, check this out – military analysts were saying that Russian forces might start using motorcycles more during their attacks, right? So, Kyiv’s troops might need to hop on two wheels to boost the mobility of their infantry units for defense and stuff. Ukraine’s national military intelligence directorate (HUR) is like the main agency in Kyiv for taking out targets in Russia. Kyiv Post tried to reach out to HUR for a comment about the fire in Kirillovka, but they hadn’t gotten back at the time of writing this article.
Some peeps were saying that there might be a long-range strike operation by Ukraine against Russia’s Black Sea coast, especially after a US Navy Poseidon aircraft did a recon mission near Novorossiysk on April 25. NATO flights over the Black Sea happened every day, but patrols like this one, more than 50 kilometers east of Romanian or Bulgarian airspace, weren’t common. The Poseidon flight was probably a first for the Russo-Ukrainian War, based on what Kyiv Post found from flight data.
So, like, British and French military planes sometimes flew close to Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea Peninsula, you know? At one point, a bunch of Atlantic Alliance aircraft did this big recon operation with spy and fighter planes getting pretty close to Russia-claimed airspace. In mid-March, Ukrainian and Russian officials were telling US peeps that they were gonna stop attacking each other in the eastern half of the Black Sea and lay off hitting energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s President was like, “We promise not to attack Russian energy stuff for 30 days.” But then, both sides started accusing each other of breaking the ceasefire, and there were these major raids targeting only energy infrastructure, although there weren’t many deets on that.
The last time Ukraine really went for it on Russian energy infrastructure was back in March, hitting an oil refinery and a pumping station, causing some chaos. But yo, Ukrainian drones weren’t the ones behind the fire at the fuel storage site in Kirillovka. People in the central region of Ryzan heard five explosions near an oil refinery there early Tuesday morning. Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency said the blasts happened after midnight, busting windows and setting off car alarms, but they didn’t confirm if drones were responsible.
The Ryazan regional administration came out saying that their air defense units had shot down 11 drones overnight, but there wasn’t any damage on the ground. Ukraine had been going hard with long-range attacks on Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure since 2023, with tons of drone strikes wrecking refineries, storage sites, and pumping stations across western and central Russia. By early 2025, the damage was adding up, with industry analysts seeing a drop in Russian oil and gas production from all those Ukrainian drone strikes.
According to a report in March, Ukrainian strikes had already cost Russia over $700 million in damaged production capacity, and a recent analysis predicted a big hit to Russian oil and gas earnings. With one-third to one-half of the Russian budget depending on energy exports, this could be a real blow, you know? So, that’s the deal with the fire in Kirillovka and all this drone strike drama – seems like things are heating up out there.
