Repeated Ukrainian Drone Strikes Setting Tuapse Refinery Ablaze Rattle Russian Propagandists

Once-taboo admissions that Ukrainian drones are doing real damage and that it will be hard for Russia to prevent more are now being aired in Russia, even by very pro-Moscow public figures. Make us preferred on Google Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Photo depicting fire at oil facilities at Russia's Tuapse seaport on Nov. 2, 2025, after a Ukrainian strike. (Photo by Crimean Wind / Telegram) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google Repeated Ukrainian strikes against a critical Russian energy export node in the Krasnodar region city of Tuapse, and unchecked fires and massive pollution, have forced Kremlin propagandists to acknowledge national air defenses are struggling to prevent Ukrainian attacks, most recently on Wednesday during a broadcast of Russia’s probably single most popular news program, Solovyev LIVE. “For us, here, there is a war going on. Just now, they [Ukraine] hit Tuapse, and not a little. We are being hit everywhere,” Solovyev erupted during a conversation with a Russian female beauty influencer named Viktoria Bonya. “The thing is, there is a part of our society for which there is no war. Which doesn’t want to accept the war. Which doesn’t want to see it.” Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . Hours before Solovyev’s broadcast, in the pre-dawn hours, workhorse Ukrainian An-196 long-range pusher drones had appeared over Tuapse and attacked. Locals reported 10-20 explosions. The strike package set at least four oil reservoirs at the site on fire and expanded a blaze in progress since an earlier attack on April 20. Practically all crude oil or crude oil derivatives exported by Russia via Black Sea ports pass through the Tuapse facility. That strike was preceded by an April 16 attack that set fires visible from space. By the time Solovyev went on the air on Wednesday, fires at Tuapse had been burning for a week and air pollution in and around the city, considered in Russia to be a seaside tourist destination, was two to three times the official safe limits. Motorists and homeowners in the region complained that toxic smoke was depositing sticky black soot on residences and vehicles. Locals called it “black rain.” Authorities warned people to stay indoors while volunteers – without government assistance – mobilized to clean beaches and wash hundreds of sea birds tarred by oil spills. Bonya, a Monaco-based businesswoman selling cosmetics by mail to Russian customers, told Solovyev that she thought local authorities were not doing enough to protect residents and ecologies, and even raised the for-Russian-TV politically-taboo possibility that Russia might not defeat Ukraine, and that it would be better for Russia to seek peace, not victory: “I want to say, now, the best thing would be an unpleasant peace [with Ukraine]. Why? Because there is so much tension right now. It is terrible tension. I feel it. In my heart and in my spirit. In Tuapse, a terrible catastrophe is happening. And Rosneft, as far as I understand, is the owner of that factory. And people really want to see officials do something. There are thousands of people working with shovels; they’re doing something so that people and animals don’t suffer. The oil is going into the groundwater. People will drink it. They will go to beaches polluted by it. People tell me, ‘I go to the beach, I pick up my towel, it’s covered with oil spots…and I am saying that governors very often in their meetings with the president [Putin] and they say everything is fine. That’s why I spoke out.” Bonya went on to say that she concerned herself with personal fulfillment, not foreign policy, and argued that the greatest public concern in Tuapse is animals and plants contaminated by spilled oil and pollution carried by soot from the refinery fires. Bonya’s comments triggered a furious response from Solovyev, who attacked Bonya for seemingly valuing clean towels over Russian soldier lives, but who also conceded – on Russian national television – that Ukraine’s long-range attacks against Russia are effective. “Are you serious Vika? The problem isn’t that [ecological impact and dirty beaches]. The problem is military strikes. The problem is that the Ukrainians are attacking. That’s the news I put out at the beginning of this broadcast. There’s a war going on, Vika! Did you have any air strikes in Monaco today? No, you don’t! And here in Russia, it’s across the territory. There’s a war going on! This isn’t foreign policy! There are strikes hitting us. In Yekaterinburg, there was an apartment building, direct hit. This isn’t foreign policy. In Tuapse, animals are suffering because the Ukraine Na*is carried out a strike against oil processing. That’s the problem!”“Strikes are continuing on our critical infrastructure, our power grid, and we can’t do anything about it,” said Aleksandr Rogatkin, a high-profile Russian propagandist, in comments aired on Wednesday by the Russian state channel Rossiya 24. “And I, for one, can’t understand the problem. You know, drones, what are they? They’re not even the tech level of World War II. They’re made of wood and reels, junk. Yet we can’t organize a decent national air defense against these things. What the Hell is the problem? They blow up our ports around Leningrad [St. Petersburg].” Rogatkin went on to mention the formerly unmentionable topic of Kremlin concentration of air defenses around the Russian capital, leaving much of the rest of the airspace of the world’s biggest country open to the free passage of Ukrainian strike aircraft.“What they did was they dragged all the air defense systems to Moscow. If you drive in Moscow, you see these towers, with Panstir [air defense systems] on the top of them, you see real organized air defense. They exist. But in other regions, you don’t see them so much,” Rogatkin said. In the often-strident world of Russian-language TikTok, comments on the Tuapse strikes and what Russia could or should do about it has been even harsher. A speaker identified as a retired Russian army officer in a comment published on the opposition channel @kargopult5 on April 22 took military leadership to task and even dared suggest Russia should admit defeat and leave Ukraine. “Have you seen what is going on in Tuapse? It is the utter humiliation of all Russian armed forces. They have turned the country into a pass-through courtyard [Russian: прохолнй двор]. Where is the might of Russian weapons? Where are our designs that have no comparison? I have said, and I repeat again: The first thing is to establish order. And only then to ask for trouble [Russian: лезть на рожон]. We need to immediately review the objectives of the special military operation, and turn away, before it’s too late,” the man identified with the surname Shamanov said.Some Kremlin loyalists have predicted the situation with Ukrainian drones will get even worse. Russian politician Artem Zhoga, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Ural Federal District, in a Monday post to residents of the central Yekatarinburg region, said that wide-ranging Ukrainian drones had for the first time reached and struck targets in West Siberia. Without offering evidence, Zhoga claimed the Ukrainian strikes targeted Russian civilians, and predicted intensified attacks: “The Urals have become vulnerable to Ukrainian drone strikes. For the first time since the beginning of the Second Military Operation [the Russo-Ukraine War], Ukrainian UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] have attacked the Sverdlovsk Region…The enemy is incapable of achieving success on the battlefield, so they can only carry out cowardly strikes against civilian targets. The Urals are now within range, be vigilant.” Veteran Russian 90s pop star and chanson singer Vika Tsyganova forwarded Zhoga’s warning on her personal VKontakte account to her 50,000+ mostly middle-aged followers and expressed worry: “What’s next? Are [Ukrainian] missiles going to start hitting the Urals?” Fan response to Tsyganova’s concerns was mixed. Some followers supported her, suggesting Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia will intensify because Russia’s senior political leadership owns too much property in Europe to seriously contemplate real, destructive attacks against Ukraine. Others called her unpatriotic and, as a woman, not intelligent enough to make public comments on Russian national security. Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US .