Tuapse Refinery Strike: Terminal Disabled, Tankers Burning

November 3, 2025November 4, 2025

Those who carefully follow official reports from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine probably already had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the report on strikes in the deep rear of the enemy. From Saturday night to Sunday. As always, it describes events already known to everyone from other sources. But an official statement is always important because enemy combat propaganda is running at full throttle. That’s why official confirmation of certain events—like the Tuapse refinery strike—matters, just to stay oriented in the mess of conflicting narratives. And today, the message looked like this:

On the night of November 1, 2025, the Defense Forces of Ukraine inflicted fire damage on the infrastructure of ‘RN-Tuapse Refinery’ in Krasnodar Krai of the russian federation. According to preliminary data, the oil loading infrastructure of the russian sea commercial port of federal significance was hit. Located on the Black Sea coast in Tuapse Bay. This terminal is one of the largest in Russia.

Why Tuapse Had to Stop

In this case, nothing new was said. Everyone knows that not only the loading capacities of Tuapse refinery suffered damage, but also two tankers standing for loading. The message turned out laconic. We’ll simply supplement it with a couple of details. It’s already known the plant stopped shipping petroleum products through the sea terminal. How long this stoppage will last remains unknown. But here we need to understand an important point. From the very beginning, they designed the plant so all its products would be loaded onto tankers. That’s precisely why the refinery stands practically on the seashore. Overall, they didn’t plan to ship the main mass of fuel to other types of transport there.

This means stopping petroleum product shipments will almost instantly lead to filling the plant’s own buffer tanks. Production will have to stop. Well, for our military it’s important to stop such enterprises’ work by any means. Most often, this is achieved by attacking the primary oil refining unit. After that, the entire technological tail stops, which receives already purified oil for further processing.

Another “Pantsir”

There were already options when good birds hit oil pipelines supplying raw materials to refineries. This also led to work stoppage. Now they managed to achieve the same thing by another method. This is an important indicator that our military adapt very quickly to enemy countermeasures he tries to implement at strategic facilities.

In this case, the countermeasure was “Pantsir” covering the port. But good drones managed to destroy “Pantsir.” Therefore, countermeasures remained smoking in the form of scrap metal. Nevertheless, the strike was delivered not on the plant’s territory itself, but on the sea terminal. Probably, there’s some sense in this. In addition, the enemy saw that no matter how he tries, the strike will be delivered from the most unexpected side.

And what’s interesting — earlier, strikes were delivered in a certain sequence so it would be difficult for the enemy to understand where it’s flying today specifically: refineries, oil depots, airfields, or military plants. But now it’s flying to an oil refinery, but not to those parts where it arrived earlier. And this means our military have a complete understanding of a specific plant’s work. They can disable it not only with strikes on distillation columns, but as we see — on other assets too.

Insurance Costs Skyrocket

Another point — tankers were also attacked. How the fire ended, on at least one of the tankers, remains unknown for now. But it’s known that after such a strike, insurance companies, which were already under scrutiny and charged three skins for mandatory insurance, will now charge a fourth. The totality of risks associated with operating such vessels will require additional costs precisely on this business element.

Plus, now there will probably be fewer people willing to work on such vessels that can suffer air attack. After all, they transport gasoline, gas, and other flammable substances. Don’t they know what a large-scale fire at sea is? Practice shows such risks lead to a sharp increase in everything related to logistics in areas where combat operations are conducted.

What the Report Doesn’t Say

But besides everything, this General Staff report is interesting also for what wasn’t in it. Let’s note again that today’s report contains data exclusively about the Tuapse refinery strike. But that same night, a series of strikes was delivered on various, including strategic, distribution electrical substations of the enemy. The famous USF¹ commander and commander of good birds Robert Brovdi “Madyar” confirmed successful strikes on these assets. But they didn’t enter the General Staff summary.

This may indicate that systematic elimination of enemy substations, which began approximately a month ago, has already become routine. And since such strikes don’t have some particularly bright picture with a huge column of smoke visible from several kilometers away, they decided not to report this anymore. But in reality, eliminating these assets is no less important than what we see during attacks on refineries or oil depots.

Let’s look once more — enemy refinery work can be stopped in three different ways:

1. Deprive the plant of oil supplies by delivering strikes on the oil pipeline.
2. Direct strike on key technological installations already at the plant itself.
3. Deprive the plant of capabilities for shipping finished products.

The Fourth Way

And now just imagine that systematic destruction of substations may turn out to be such a “circuit breaker” that can stop enterprises of an entire region. Those wishing can independently read messages from local gauleiter, where they write they managed to restore everything by engaging reserve capacities. But the thing is, their reserves are extremely limited. They definitely weren’t prepared for such capacity losses. After all, they didn’t even include such war and such strikes in the most pessimistic forecasts.

So now they’re burning through reserves meant for scheduled maintenance. And while those maintenance cycles are long, the attacks are frequent. All this means that right now, these strikes are rapidly depleting enemy resources—and once those run out, the real fun begins. Compared to what’s coming, refinery strikes—like the Tuapse refinery strike—will look like child’s play.

¹USF – Unmanned Systems Forces, Ukraine’s newly established branch of the Armed Forces. No, not the U.S. Navy — in Ukraine USF means those who destroy Russian bombers, not those who park aircraft carriers.