Fire and brimstone in Rostov: Ukraine's drone attacks ignite crisis

Bringing in a holy icon, prayers from two priests, the involvement of 500 firefighters, planes, and a firefighting train didn't help. After five days, when the Russians managed to extinguish a few tanks at the oil base in the Rostov region, more Ukrainian drones flew over.

"That was some explosion. I felt the heat all the way here. Did you feel it? Are the guys there? Retreat, cars back!" says one of the Russian firefighters in a new recording documenting the action of extinguishing the oil and fuel tanks in Proletarsk. He is standing at least several hundred yards from the fire. He utters a string of curses when another tank explodes.

Another recording from August 21 shows the Russian Telegram channel "This is Rostov" displaying firefighters trying to escape in a fire truck along a lane between the tanks. Just then, one of them explodes. "What a heat. Sania, let's get out of here, let's get out of here!" shouts a firefighter in the film. The driver floors the gas, and an orange glow appears in the cab from the blazing flames nearby. Another film shows the truck and people breaking out of the trap, driving onto an empty field.

This is not the end of the Russians' nightmare. On Thursday, six tanks were extinguished (reported by TASS agency). At dawn, Ukraine resumed its drone attack on the base. Reports of this appeared on Telegram on Friday. There were no reports of casualties from the attack. However, more films with blazing flames were published, with a litany of curses heard in the background, presumably directed at the Ukrainians.

On August 18, the fire started with the shooting down of Ukrainian drones targeting the tanks. The base was enveloped in black smoke, and according to analysts, 22 tanks out of over 40 caught fire. During the several-day firefighting action, 47 employees of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations were injured, and 15 of them were hospitalized, reported the Russian agency TASS.

According to the account of firefighter Władysław Gonczarow, firefighting equipment belonging to local units burned out in the action. Gonczarow appealed on the Internet for a fundraiser, which did not please the authorities.

Clerics with a holy icon, who said a prayer and blessed firefighting equipment, were present near the burning base.

The fire in Proletarsk is the result of this year-long Ukrainian offensive involving drone attacks on refineries and fuel bases. The scale of these attacks is displayed in an infographic. On Thursday, after a Ukrainian attack near the Kerch Strait, the Russian ferry "Aquatrader," carrying rail tankers with fuel, caught fire and sank.

On the afternoon of August 21, in the vicinity of the Olenia military airfield in the Murmansk region (in northern Russia), for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a drone - a modified aircraft - was shot down. If it was launched from Ukraine, it would be a record 1200-mile flight over Russia. This event heralds that the hunt for refineries will cover new areas.

"Ukraine undertakes these attacks to paralyze logistics because Putin's war machine needs constant supplies of enormous amounts of fuel," comments Wojciech Jakóbik, Polish energy sector analyst and founder of the Energy Security Centre, in an interview with WP. He points out that Proletarsk is significant because it is behind eastern Ukraine's front and offensive.

"Striking the oil sector is intended to cause fuel shortages at the front, but not only. By damaging refineries and other installations, it reduces the profits of Russian companies from fuel sales. In this way, the attacks contribute to increasing the effects of the sanctions imposed on Russia," adds the WP interviewer.

He notes that Russia was forced to introduce an embargo on gasoline exports, meaning there is a fuel shortage in the domestic market. Russian media also reported the threat of railway paralysis, as they urgently had to transport raw materials for fuel production to the undamaged refineries.

According to Wojciech Jakóbik, the most detrimental attacks for Russia are those on refineries because their repair is costly and time-consuming; secondly are the bases storing fuel and raw materials. In the spring of 2024, after a series of drone strikes, Ukraine managed to decommission 7% of Russian refinery capacity, experts from Forbes magazine estimated.