Ukraine drone strike on Russian oil refinery triggers environmental disaster

When volunteer Sergei Solovev arrived in the Black Sea town of Tuapse, Russia, the air reeked of oil and everything was coated in a layer of black grime. “I saw railway cars covered in residue from black rain and animals. Everything is very toxic,” he told Al Jazeera. “The smell is very oily.”

Black rain is an unusual weather phenomenon where water droplets are darkened by soot and ash. It has occurred in Hiroshima, Japan, after the 1945 atomic bombing, more recently in Tehran, Iran, and in 1991 in Kuwait when oil wells were set ablaze during the Gulf War.

Over the past two weeks, Tuapse has endured three Ukrainian drone strikes targeting the oil refinery – one of Russia's largest. The attacks, aimed at weakening Russia's oil industry, have caused an ecological disaster amid the war's environmental toll.

The first strike occurred on April 16, sparking a fire that burned for two days. Four days later, on April 20, the refinery was attacked again, sending a thick column of black smoke into the sky. This time, the fire lasted five days. The smoke released toxic chemicals; subsequent air analysis showed benzene, xylene, and coal dust levels three times above safe limits. Residents were advised to stay indoors, close windows, and wear masks outdoors.

Black rain began to fall. “The rain covered all cars and animals. All animals were covered in oil. Volunteers set up an animal cleaning center,” said local volunteer Elena Lugovenko. Volunteers collected affected cats, dogs, and birds, washed them, and brought them to shelters. Oil spills are especially dangerous for birds, impairing their flight and causing them to ingest toxic oil while preening.

By the end of the April 20 attack, at least eight storage tanks at the refinery were destroyed, spilling oil into the nearby Tuapse River, which then flowed into the Black Sea, spreading along the coast. Authorities deployed over a dozen vessels to clean up the oil slick, installed booms on beaches, and dispatched rescue teams and volunteers with excavators to clean the pebble beaches, collecting oil into drums and plastic bags.

“It is an environmental disaster,” said Solovev, who drove from Sochi, 116 km along the coast, to join the cleanup. “Oil has spilled across the coast within a 20-km radius. Everything is still not cleaned; everything is covered in oil. All the soil needs to be removed, a huge amount of black sludge covering stones in hard-to-reach places, where we can't even bring equipment.”

Local environmentalists told the Russian outlet Important Stories that, in some cases, authorities have covered the beaches with new gravel to conceal the oil rather than remove it. Ruslan Khvostov, chairman of the Green Alternative party, warned that long-term consequences could be “severe and last for years.”

“Oil products settle into the Black Sea's bottom sediments, disrupting the food chain, and everything will be affected. The oil slick blocks oxygen, causing mass die-offs of fish, shellfish, and benthic organisms; biodiversity recovery takes 5–10 years or more, as in the 2024 Kerch oil spill. Toxins accumulate in organisms, threatening birds and marine mammals like dolphins and bottlenose dolphins.”

After the third strike on Tuesday, conditions in Tuapse deteriorated so badly that the town was evacuated. According to Witold Stupnicki, a senior analyst at ACLED, Ukraine is likely to continue and escalate this campaign, especially as domestic drone production capacity increases.

The Tuapse disaster is not the first in the region. In December 2024, two Russian oil tankers sank in a storm on the Black Sea, spilling thousands of tons of oil that washed up near the resort of Anapa. Thousands of volunteers joined the cleanup of one of Russia's worst environmental disasters.