Major Russian oil depot Grushovaya Balka near the port of Novorossiysk is on fire following tonight’s drone attack [Special Kherson Cat]

This picture shows the difference between a place that has a fire going on there, and a place that is *very much on fire*.

Jesus. There are fewer square feet of this facility than are not on fire than are.

Oh, wow. This is a huge facility at the crest of the mountain above Novorossiysk, located on the pipeline that brings product from near Krymsk, over the mountain, then through large tunnels down to the storage and loading facilities by the shore. I don’t have any specific knowledge, but I suspect a lot of the flow of product occurs by gravity feed from the top of the mountain down to the port. There’s much more storage up here than the shoreline itself, and a lot of the shoreline storage is underground, probably making it harder to attack. Meanwhile, the storage at the top is packed in closely because of the narrow mountain valley and is mostly above-ground tanks.

You can see where the pipes go into the tunnel at the top of the mountain here: [https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7518776,37.865915,314m/data=!3m1!1e3](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7518776,37.865915,314m/data=!3m1!1e3)

And comes out down here: [https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7216115,37.8588453,471m/data=!3m1!1e3](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7216115,37.8588453,471m/data=!3m1!1e3)

By doing this they’re shutting off the upstream source for the whole port.