Fire breaks out at oil terminal in Russia’s Leningrad region following drone attack
Russian authorities reported a massive drone attack early Monday morning; at the port in Primorsk, Leningrad region, a fuel tank was damaged in the attack, which caused a fire.
According to Ukrinform, the BBC News Russian service reported this.
The drone strike was confirmed by Aleksandr Drozdenko, governor of the Leningrad region. According to him, port personnel were evacuated.
The port of Primorsk houses a marine oil terminal owned by Transneft. The port’s oil handling capacity on the Baltic Sea is approximately 1 million barrels of crude oil per day and about 300,000 barrels of diesel fuel per day. This makes it a key transshipment point for Russia’s main Urals crude and low-sulfur Euro-5 diesel fuel.
According to the governor, 60 drones were reportedly shot down in the Leningrad region; one of them damaged a power line tower near the village of Yermilovo, close to the border with Finland.
Restrictions on flight arrivals and departures were imposed at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport; the airport has now resumed flights on a limited basis.
On the night of March 22–23, in the city of Gatchina in the Leningrad region, a Russian air defense missile exploded 1 kilometer from the VISCOM military plant, according to the results of an OSINT analysis of the Astra Telegram channel.
This is a classified defense enterprise that was spun off from the Gatchina-based Avangard plant. The enterprise specializes in the development and production of close-quarters combat equipment and explosive devices, as well as specialized equipment for law enforcement agencies. The plant is listed in the Register of Organizations of the Russian Federation’s Defense-Industrial Complex.
Aleksandr Bogomaz, Governor of the Bryansk Region of the Russian Federation, claimed that 128 aircraft-type drones were allegedly shot down over the region during the night. According to him, as a result of the strike on the territory of the Miratorg agricultural holding, two employees were injured, and two trucks were damaged.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that a total of 283 drones were allegedly destroyed and intercepted over Russian regions on Sunday night. The ministry stated that the UAVs were shot down over the territories of the Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula regions, the Moscow region, and over the waters of the Sea of Azov.
As reported by Ukrinform, on March 21, Russian Telegram channels reported a massive drone attack targeting an oil refinery and two chemical plants.
Photo: Tatiana Bashinskaya, wiki