Drones Hit Train Ferry in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai

Drones struck a train ferry at a Russian railway station and port east of Crimea on Tuesday morning, July 23, leaving one dead and five wounded local authorities said.

“The Kyiv regime has once again attempted a terrorist attack on the territory of Krasnodar Krai,” Governor Veniamin Kondratyev claimed in a Telegram post.

However, Kyiv Post asked Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) – which regularly takes credit for drone attacks on Russian military targets – whether it had carried out the strike, and HUR denied Ukrainian involvement in this one.

Kondratiev said the ferry caught fire and that emergency services were working at the scene. The fire was localized with no threat of it spreading, he added.

According to the Telegram channel, Crimean Wind, witnesses saw ambulances and firefighters driving toward Port Kavkaz Tuesday morning.

Port Kavkaz, in Russia’s Krasnodar Oblast, is situated on the Chushka Spit in the Kerch Strait.

The port can handle vessels up to 130 meters long, 14.5 meters wide and up to 5 meters deep. There is also a car ferry connecting Krasnodar Territory and Crimea – the Ukrainian region under Russian occupation since 2014.

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While Kyiv didn’t claim credit for Tuesday’s strike, Kyiv Post sources in HUR said that it did take credit for another strike carried out the day before, in which Ukrainian drones attacked an oil refinery in Tuapse, Krasnodar Oblast.

The drones struck a major fuel and lubricant processing facility at Russia‘s main oil terminal on the Black Sea, which, in pre-war years, produced two million tons of product annually, almost all for export.

The Krasnodar region’s operational headquarters stated that “as a result of the fall of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) debris, the infrastructure of the oil refinery in Tuapse was damaged.”

“Specialists are extinguishing the fire in an area of ​​50 square meters. Thirty-one units of equipment and 91 people are working on the spot,” it wrote.