The hits keep coming. Overnight, Ukraine struck two more oil refineries in Russia. This first one was located in Bashkortostan.
🔥🛢️Russia’s Salavat refinery in Bashkortostan was hit overnight. 1300km from the frontline.
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 14, 2026
Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat has annual oil-processing capacity of around 10 million tons. pic.twitter.com/LckUYXfHf3
A productive night for Ukraine's Defense Forces: two oil refineries, a transshipment area, and other Russian military facilities were struck.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 14, 2026
▪️ Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat, one of Russia's largest oil refining and petrochemical complexes, was attacked in Bashkortostan.
According… pic.twitter.com/Cq88cewoNZ
This is apparently the only major refinery that hadn't been hit by a drone in 2026.
Deep Strike units from Ukraine's Special Operations Forces (SOF) successfully struck Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat, one of Russia's largest oil refining and petrochemical complexes, located in Bashkortostan, on the night of 13-14 July...
The special forces said their drones successfully reached their targets. Early reports indicate that the critical AVT-6 primary oil distillation unit and other production facilities at the plant were hit.
Also hit last night was the Afipsky refinery.
Afipsky Refinery in Krasnodarhttps://t.co/OqU1qaKaCj
— Ukrainian Ministry of Accidental Russian Fires (@EPICGOPFAIL) July 14, 2026
Lots of unclear reports late into the night last night, but Astra specifies that it's "somewhere in the oil reservoir park" pic.twitter.com/G5zlxPOjoR
It's worth noting that Russia is denying both strikes were successful. Instead the story at both refineries is that falling debris from intercepted drones started a fire.
Moving from the land to the sea, another significant strike last night put a well known Russian Coast Guard ship at the bottom of the port where it was located.
🔥⚓️BREAKING: Ukraine’s Navy sank the Russian FSB border guard ship Izumrud near Novorossiysk with a Sargan-3000 unmanned combat system.
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 14, 2026
The ship was a 2nd-rank border patrol vessel with a helipad, launched in 2014, measuring 62.5 meters long and displacing around 630 to 750… https://t.co/aOXB3DqRWO pic.twitter.com/k2LMNxrO2h
Ukraine’s Navy sank the Russian FSB border guard ship Izumrud near Novorossiysk with a Sargan-3000 unmanned combat system.
The ship was a 2nd-rank border patrol vessel with a helipad, launched in 2014, measuring 62.5 meters long and displacing around 630 to 750 tons.
The sinking of Izumrud is highly symbolic for Ukraine: the ship took part in Russia’s attack on Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Kerch Strait on November 25, 2018.
This one has a significant backstory.
...the Izumrud participated in Russia's attack on three Ukrainian naval vessels in the Kerch Strait on Nov. 25, 2018, in what at the time was one of the most significant clashes of the war between the two sides before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
During the incident, Russian forces opened fire on and seized two Ukrainian gunboats and a tugboat as they attempted to transit the Kerch Strait from Odesa to Mariupol. Twenty-four Ukrainian sailors were captured and later released in a prisoner exchange in 2019.
Here's some video of the Kerch incident from 2018. This is shot from onboard a Russian ship.
On November 25, 2018, Ukrainian Navy vessels Berdyansk, Nikopol and the tug Yany Kapu were making a planned passage from Odesa to Mariupol through the Kerch Strait.
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 14, 2026
Russia blocked the route under the Kerch Bridge with a cargo ship, rammed Yany Kapu with the FSB patrol ship Don,… https://t.co/0yYA2Arwj4 pic.twitter.com/izPIagJnrO
Here is the Izumrud under the waves today. There's no repairing that.
🇺🇦⚓ Супутниковий знімок підтверджує знищення російського прикордонного сторожового корабля «Ізумруд» біля причальної стінки.
— Військово-Морські Сили ЗС України (@UA_NAVY) July 14, 2026
Продовжуємо знижувати потенціал російського агресора на морі💪 pic.twitter.com/rZENkcC10X
It was struck by a sea-drone like this one:
Sargan-3000, which sunk a Russian Izumrud border guard ship today, is Ukraine’s multi-role unmanned naval combat system, adopted by the Ukrainian Navy.
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 14, 2026
Its full specifications remain classified, including range, speed, payload, propulsion and guidance architecture. https://t.co/0yYA2Arwj4 pic.twitter.com/sUr9p3v8jH
The Ukrainian Navy posted a message about the attack: "Revenge is inevitable. To be continued."
Finally, Ukraine also struck another 11 ships in the Sea of Azov last night.
Magyar’s poetry update: the shadow fleet is wasting away – and it should disappear as a species.
— 414 Magyar's Birds (@414magyarbirds) July 14, 2026
+11⚓️🔥 on the night of July 14. In just 9 days, USF Birds have hunted down 116 vessels in the Sea of Azov as part of Operation "MoLoCHKa": 5 oil tankers, 5 dry cargo vessels, and 1… pic.twitter.com/qvhfwlT97g
+11⚓️🔥 on the night of July 14. In just 9 days, USF Birds have hunted down 116 vessels in the Sea of Azov as part of Operation "MoLoCHKa": 5 oil tankers, 5 dry cargo vessels, and 1 tugboat.
The shadow fleet is wasting away – and it should disappear as a species.
A lot of people don't fully understand what's happening around this naval battle. Where did all these tankers come from? What's their mission? And why are the USF Birds hammering them without sinking them, instead turning them into ghost ships drifting at sea? I'll find the time and record a video explaining it all.
For now, here's the short version: PARALYZING russia's feeder fleet – the small and medium 140-meter flat-bottomed "courier" tankers with a deadweight of around 7,000 tons – effectively cripples a major component of russia's shadow fleet. It prevents the export of its "black gold" from river-port oil transshipment bases and loading terminals through the Volga–Don Canal and the Sea of Azov to large tankers. Those larger tankers can't reach the oil terminals or ports because of their draft, so they're forced to load offshore in the Black Sea from these courier tankers, each of them taking on cargo delivered by 12–15 of these little water shuttles.
Burning these worm-camels of the sea – along with the tugboats that keep dragging them around after they've been hit – also limits deliveries of scarce gasoline to Crimea through the shallow bottleneck of the Sea of Azov. That leaves road and rail tankers as the primary supply route – a far more dangerous option, since both remain under the fire control of the Freedom-Loving Ukrainian Bird, whether they move on asphalt or rails.
These ships are basically shuttles bringing the illegally sold oil out to larger tankers in the Black Sea. By damaging this fleet, you effectively cut off Russia's ability to sell oil and grain from these ports and that creates a problem for an economy that is already struggling to keep up with the cost of the war. I'll have an update on Russia's economy coming up later today.
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