Tuapse refinery Hit, Crimean Ships Struck, Propaganda Shifts

April 20, 2026April 21, 2026

The General Staff confirmed the repeated Tuapse refinery hit. But judging by the photos and videos locals are posting, the scale of damage is hard to compare with anything we’ve seen before this night. This was some completely unusual kind of hit — not just the storage tanks burning, but everything around them too. A solid field of fire turned out so massive it swallowed what used to be called “Tuapse Oil Refinery”, and the enemy facility likely ceased to exist.

Besides that, reports came through that around the same time, strikes hit the remnants of the Orcs’¹ ship composition that haven’t been pulled out of Sevastopol. Landing ships became something like a suitcase without a handle for the enemy. If they move them to Novorossiysk, there won’t be room for ships that can launch Kalibrs at Ukraine. At the same time, they can’t roam the Black Sea hauling military cargo because of our sea drones.

Reports about an attack on enemy landing ships inside the bay looked too optimistic, but then the Main Directorate of Intelligence published a description of this attack:

The HUR² “Ghosts” unit in temporarily occupied Crimea delivered successful strikes on two large landing ships of the aggressor state russia — the BDK Project 775 “Yamal” and BDK Project 1171 “Nikolai Filchenkov”. At the moment of the strike, the enemy ships, which are part of the russian Black Sea flotilla, were in Sevastopol Bay.

And the OSINT community “CyberBoroshno” published the full list of struck landing ships — six in total. Three of them were hit by the SBU’s Alpha CSO, two by HUR, and one (LDV “Minsk”) was hit by a Storm Shadow missile back in 2023.

Plus, video of this attack was posted, and besides the fact of hitting the ships itself, it’s easy to notice another important moment. The video shows absolutely zero work from enemy air defense systems — not even barrel weapons, guns and machine guns. Nothing at all.

Kremlin Goes Silent

Also important is that the enemy’s main Telegram channels and media are silent about this attack, but individual resources are writing in despair:

Translation from Russian: the headline says nothing less than “Western coalition attacked”. They still can’t let into their brains the thought that Ukraine did all this, using Ukrainian-made strike weapons.

If you keep scrolling through current Russian propaganda, it becomes obvious that the Orcs themselves, even carefully choosing their words, describe the situation grimly. They admit current russian air defense can’t cope with the mass and regularity of Ukrainian drone raids. It gets to the point where russian propagandists are calling for strikes on European military factories where drones and missiles are assembled for the Armed Forces. According to them, if this isn’t done right now, irreversible consequences will come by year’s end. And here’s a very interesting concept:

A new goal of the “special operation” could be defending russian rear areas from enemy strikes. Everyone saw the horrifying photos and videos from Tuapse, from other cities. Everyone knows we have problems defending even the deep rear from enemy strikes. Right now new goals for the SVO³ are being formulated instead of the initial ones, which are difficult to achieve. Defense of all of Russia, including regions far from the SVO zone, should become one of the most important goals.

So the Kremlin thinks about feeding the population some understandable fairy tale explaining why the bald führer wages this war. It’s clear to everyone that pootin not only doesn’t want to end the war, but can’t — not in the form it’s going now, not in the direction it’s developing. Stopping the war won’t just be a defeat — it’ll be his personal defeat with all the corresponding consequences.

Recruitment Numbers Crash

There’s also a question about the price the Orcs have to pay for continuing the war. Against the backdrop of increasingly frequent, distant, and heavy strikes by Defense Forces on their rear areas — the propagandists’ lies about “denazification” and other nonsense just don’t work anymore. This is clearly visible from the dynamics of contract soldier recruitment. Fewer and fewer Orcs want to play this war, and they give themselves this infographic:

A number of propagandists are already asking the rhetorical question: what the hell is happening? Why did losses become so high that they can’t be filled with new meat anymore?

By the way, this is an important indicator that the shit-stirring in the Rabid Federation is starting to come to nothing. The former victory-frenzy is gone even though they’re offering fantastical money for an average Orc’s contract. But neither money nor propaganda works. Nobody thought the war would last this long and that initial motivation and propaganda would stop working.

Kremlin Searches for New Lies

All of this together — the burning of ports and ships, refineries and oil depots, military warehouses and factories, the situation with replenishment and losses — demands a change in propaganda concept. The Kremlin understands that old theses about “denazification” and “demilitarization” don’t work and don’t provide the needed motivation. Put simply, the fairy tales the führer hung on the population’s ears four years ago are of no interest to anyone today. Now they urgently have to invent new ones so it’s clear why the war lasts many years. What the Orcs will come up with is unknown for now, but against the backdrop of the Tuapse refinery hit, a shift in their propaganda concept is already openly visible.

Footnotes

¹Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine. Dehumanizing? Yes. Accurate? Also yes.

²HUR (Ukrainian: ГУР, Головне Управління Розвідки, Holovne Upravlinnya Rozvidky) – the military intelligence agency of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

³SVO – abbreviation of “Spetsialnaya Voennaya Operatsiya” (“special military operation”). Since 2022, Orcs use this euphemism to describe their full-scale war against Ukraine.

For a full list of military terms, see the Full Glossary.