Russia's Ust-Luga port damaged by Ukrainian drones, fire breaks out

MOSCOW: Russia's Ust-Luga port, one of its largest petroleum export outlets, was damaged on Sunday in a Ukrainian drone attack that sparked a fire, Russian officials said.

Ukraine has intensified drone attacks on Russia's oil and ‌fuel export ⁠infrastructure ⁠this month, hitting all three of Russia's major western oil export ports, including Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea.

Those attacks have caused severe oil supply disruption for Russia, the world's second-largest oil exporter, ⁠and have ‌hit Moscow just as oil prices exceeded $100 a barrel due to the Iran ⁠war.


The governor of Russia's northern Leningrad region said there had been waves of Ukrainian drone attacks on the area and that a fire had broken out at the port of Ust-Luga, which was also hit by drones on Wednesday.

The port, operated by Russian oil pipeline ‌monopoly Transneft, handles around 700,000 barrels per day of oil exports, and, according to sources, shipped 32.9 ⁠million metric tons of oil products in 2025.

Ukraine's SBU security agency said long-range drones struck an oil terminal at Ust-Luga. It added in a statement that the strike caused "serious damage" and a fire at the port.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the scale of the damage.