Ukrainian drones strike key Russian Black Sea oil terminal

A Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil terminal in Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk on Saturday, May 23, 2026, injuring at least two people and damaging several technical and administrative buildings, according to local officials. The attack at what Russian media identified as the Sheskharis oil depot, the terminus for state-controlled pipeline company Transneft's main oil pipelines in the region, sent plumes of smoke above the port facility. Debris from the drones also fell onto a fuel storage terminal and damaged private homes in the nearby city of Anapa. Novorossiysk handles approximately one-fifth of Russia's crude oil shipments and serves as the country's largest export hub on the Black Sea, making the facility a strategic target. Russia's defense ministry reported that its air defenses intercepted 348 Ukrainian drones overnight. Ukraine has increasingly focused on striking Russian energy infrastructure as part of its strategy to undermine oil revenues that fund Moscow's invasion, which began in 2022. Kyiv has not immediately commented on the specific attack. Separately, the death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike on a college dormitory in Starobilsk, in Russian-occupied Luhansk region, rose to 11. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the May 22 strike a "crime" and ordered military proposals for retaliation. At a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting, Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk Andrii rejected accusations of war crimes, stating the operations "exclusively targeted the Russian war machine."