Drone Strike Starts Fire at Ust-Luga as Yanos Refinery Halts Two Units
Leningrad region authorities claim 44 drones were downed overnight as a major Baltic export gateway is hit again
A Ukrainian drone attack has caused a fire and damage inside the port zone at Ust-Luga, one of Russia's most important Baltic export gateways, in the latest of a run of strikes on the terminal complex.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia's Leningrad region, confirmed the damage early on Tuesday, with emergency services responding while the attack was still being repelled. Russian authorities claimed 44 drones were shot down across the region overnight. Neither the specific facility hit nor the scale of the damage has been confirmed.
The commercial effect is visible further inland. Yanos, one of Russia's five largest refineries and a major supplier to Moscow and central Russia, has suspended two of its three crude distillation units following the strike.
Ust-Luga is not a single-commodity terminal. It handles large volumes of crude oil, refined products, coal, LNG, gas condensate and fertilisers, which makes any interruption there felt across several trades at once rather than in one. Loadings of crude and clean products from the port feed a long-haul tanker trade that has already been reshaped by sanctions and by the shift of Russian barrels towards Asia.
Tuesday's attack continues a pattern that began earlier in the year. Drones targeted the port on 14 August, including facilities linked to the gas producer Novatek. In March the complex was hit in an intense series of strikes: an attack on 25 March set the Novatek gas condensate complex on fire, and the port was targeted for a third time in little over a week, with satellite imagery showing at least eight storage tanks destroyed or damaged.
The repeated strikes have already changed how Russia handles shipping in the Baltic. Security around the approaches has been tightened, and operators calling at Ust-Luga have been ordered to carry out extensive underwater hull inspections following a series of suspected sabotage incidents involving tankers that used the port.
