Ukraine hits key Russian oil terminal after US warning

AFP | Kyiv

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Ukraine struck an oil terminal in the southern Russian port of Novorossiysk early Monday, the Ukrainian army said, several days after the US was reported to have warned Kyiv not to attack its interests at the port.

Ukraine hit the Sheskharis terminal last November, as well as the nearby Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal, which handles the bulk of Kazakhstan’s oil exports.

The CPC is partly owned by US oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil, and handles up to one percent of the world’s oil supplies.

The US State Department told Ukraine to stop attacking its interests at the port following those attacks last year, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States said last week, according to US media reports.

It was not immediately clear when the United States made the warning, or which parts of the port it did not wish Ukraine to attack.

Novorossiysk handles around a fifth of Russia’s crude oil shipments and is the country’s largest export hub on the Black Sea.

Unverified videos posted on Russian social media purported to show a fire burning at the port, as well as a projectile streaking across the night sky.

“During the night of March 2, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces struck the Sheskharis oil terminal and the Novorossiysk naval base in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai,” the Ukrainian army said on Facebook.

“A large-scale fire has been recorded on the site.”

The attack wounded five people, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said in a post on Telegram, without mentioning the oil terminal.

A state of emergency was declared in the city, he added.