Rostov Fuel Depot Blaze Aggravated by Second Ukrainian Drone Strike

A second wave of Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones slammed into an already-burning Russian fuel storage facility near the Azov Sea port city of Rostov early on Friday morning, setting off new explosions as emergency responders continued to struggle to control the expanding six-day-old blaze.  

Local media and chat groups reported at least two further blasts having taken place at the Rostreserv petroleum products storage site, near the village of Proletarsk, some 150 kilometers (94 miles) inland and to the east of Rostov.

The state-owned facility with a total of 78 storage tanks holding diesel, lubricants, gasoline and aviation fuel among other oil-based products serves as part of the Russian Federation’s national fuel reserve.

The independent news platform news161.ru reported two more explosions at around 3:30 a.m. ten minutes apart. Residents said streets and buildings throughout Proletarsk were lit up from the flash that shook windows, was loud enough to wake up residents and dislodge roofing from buildings more than two kilometers from the burning fuel tank farm.

A statement by the Rostov regional authorities said local air defense forces had knocked down seven incoming Ukrainian kamikaze aircraft without offering details of any damage done or casualties.

A second wave of Ukrainian drones struck the facility at about 5 a.m. according to unconfirmed mainstream and social media reports, while there was no official confirmation or denial.

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The Ukrainian news correspondent Andriy Tsaplienko said early on Friday morning that Ukrainian strikes had impacted on already-dangerous firefighting efforts underway at Proletarsk. He said that, if unchecked the fire from burning diesel fuel reservoirs could spread to as-yet untouched storage tanks containing more explosive gasoline, natural gas and aviation fuel.

The initial Ukrainian drone attack on Aug. 19 set around eight of the 78-fuel storage reservoirs at the facility ablaze. The regional governor Vasiliy Golubev said at the times that the wreckage of a single drone fell on “industrial storage,” igniting a diesel fuel fire that firefighting crews who were on the scene would extinguish the fire in due course.

Golubev’s calming words notwithstanding, the Proletarsk fires were still burning fiercely and out of control three days later as confirmed by dozens of local media reports and hundreds of images and videos on social media that were geo-located to the facility.

More than 150 pieces of fire-fighting equipment and 500+ firefighters from as far away as Rostov, Elista, Novocherkassk, Taganrog, Krasnodar and Volgograd had deployed to Prolatarsk to help fight the fire, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said on Thursday.

By that evening the Don Mash news site said nearly 50 firefighters had been injured battling flames and toxic smoke requiring breathing masks that were now hundreds of meters into the sky. Pro-Russian news platforms reported that some firefighters had been working for two days without sleep.

The Mayor of Proletarsk, Maksim Tolpinskiy continued told to the official Kremlin narrative that the situation was well in hand and the fires were under control.

“We are living in a slightly different reality than before in our city. This is because an oil storage facility by our town has been burning as the result of strikes by several drones,” Tolpinsiy told the NN news platform in a video interview as a huge cloud of black smoke billowed into the sky behind him. 

“At present I would like to stop some of the rumors that people are running from the city. No one is running anywhere. The situation in our city is in reality stable. Every day, twice a day, there are [air quality] situation evaluations. No presence of harmful materials has been detected [in the air]. There is no evacuation being planned,” Tolpinskiy said.

International satellite overflight imagery captured most recently on Aug. 22by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 5P satellite showed a 50-kilometer smoke cloud drifting east from the fires visible from space.

Image from the ESA Sentinel 5P satellite on Aug. 22 shows a 50-kilometer smoke cloud heading east from fires at the Rostreserv oil storage site.

According to local news platforms dozens of Proletarsk residents had evacuated their homes by Wednesday using private vehicles. While those who remained said the air throughout the town was acrid and visibility was difficult because of an oil fire-induced fog.

Russian mil-blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk in a post to his half million+ followers on Friday said Kyiv was systematically attacking fuel supply infrastructure in south-west Russia as part of a longer-term campaign to isolate Russian-controlled Crimea.

Russian forces occupied Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 in the first of a series of overt territorial grabs launched by Moscow against Kyiv in the intervening decade. The Black Sea peninsula once under Moscow’s control has become almost totally dependent on mainland Russia for supplies of food, fuel and water.

Zvinchuk said that recent Ukrainian strikes against the Proletarsk facility and another fuel storage site, near port of Kavkaz on the Kerch Strait, would force Crimea motorists to pay higher prices to drive their cars in the face of probable gasoline shortages.

In a spectacular Thursday raid a pair of Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles flew hundreds of kilometers from a launch site reportedly in the Zaporizhzhia region to break through Russian air defenses to hit and sink the 4,500-ton Conroe Trader ferry which was loaded with 30 rail cars carrying fuel intended for Crimea and was tied up at pier in the port.

According to Ukrainian military sources, the vessel was the last-rail car capable vessel operated by Russia in the Black Sea region. Its destruction combined with damage to the Proletarsk facility has, according to observers, left Kremlin logisticians with few means of transporting fuel into Crimea at the necessary scales.

The pro-Ukraine military information site Krymsky Veter (Crimea Wind) reported on Friday that prices for high-quality 95 octane gasoline had spiked two percent overnight and that lower-cost auto fuel had run out at some filling stations in Simferopol, the Crimea regional capital.

Local media in the Russia-occupied Crimea reported raised prices, long queues and gasoline shortages at fuel stations in the region on Aug. 22 and 23.