Ukraine on Wednesday launched mass kamikaze drone attacks at oil refineries, port facilities, and air defense installations in the occupied Crimea Peninsula and inside the Russian mainland, scoring hits and setting fires at several locations.
A surge of NATO reconnaissance sorties monitoring Crimea and the Black Sea preceded the strikes by Kyiv, but it was not possible to confirm a direct link between the remarkably high Atlantic Alliance air activity over Romania and waters nearby, and the Ukrainian drone raids further east.
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Low-flying aircraft waves crossing the Black Sea in groups of five to ten appeared to focus on Russia’s western Black Sea shore and Krasnodar region. Seaport infrastructure near the Kerch Strait port of Temryuk, an oil refinery and storage tanks adjacent to the Russian seaside city of Anapa, and a major fuel production and storage site near the town of Tuapse were hit. Both oil refineries are owned and operated by Rosneft, a state-run giant Russian energy conglomerate.
Social media video geolocated to the vicinity of Tuapse showed anti-aircraft missile launches above a brightly lit city and anti-aircraft cannon firing out to sea. Some footage recorded the buzz of propeller aircraft engines and ground explosions. Small arms fire also was audible.
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The independent Russian news agency Astra reported pipelines and oil refinery facilities damaged at Tuapse, with two drones penetrating air defenses to hit refinery property. Damage forced the shut-down of processing machinery and caused a minor oil spill, the report said.
Other Russian information platforms said the refinery’s ELPU-AVT cracking tower, which performs electric desalination and dehydration of oil, and atmospheric and vacuum distillation at the facility, was taken off-line.
Ukrainian drones knocked out the tower once before, in January. Blast and falling debris from the Wednesday attack damaged two houses and destroyed a civilian automobile, the Astra report said.
The NASA-run global fire watch satellite network FIRMS showed no major fires burning in western Russia. A serious blaze was visible in west Crimea near the village of Novoivanivka. Russian air defenses have deployed to the area in the past. It was not clear what caused the fires or what was burning.
Explosions possibly linked to Ukrainian strike aircraft were reported in the occupied Crimea peninsula near Sevastopol, and inland near the military airfields Saki and Krasnohvardiiske. The Russian military uses the bases primarily to launch air strikes against targets in southern Ukraine.
Until October 2023, Sevastopol was the home port of Russia’s once-powerful Black Sea Fleet, but long-range Ukrainian drone and missile strikes forced Moscow to re-base surviving warships in mainland Russian seaports.
Russian social media reported powerful explosions taking place shortly before 4 a.m. near the Crimean city of Feodosia. Russian air/sea watch installations and small naval elements are based in the area.
Moscow’s Defense Ministry said it had shot down 128 Ukrainian drones primarily over the occupied Crimean Peninsula and Krasnodar region on Russia’s western Black Sea shore. According to that source, all incoming aircraft were destroyed with neither casualties nor significant ground damage.
Kremlin officials have repeatedly blamed NATO for, allegedly, flying reconnaissance and surveillance missions into the airspace over the western Black Sea to identify the locations of Russian air defenses and combat aircraft, and then turning the intelligence over to the Ukrainian military for targeting by drones.
Neither NATO nor the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have directly confirmed the claims, but both have said Ukraine’s allies help Kyiv with intelligence.
Open-source flight tracking platforms on Wednesday morning showed an unusually high concentration of NATO military aircraft over the western Black Sea, including French Air Force warplanes.
According to the Mode 3 civilian aircraft transponder-tracking platform, FlightRadar24, as of 7 a.m. two NATO nation reconnaissance planes were above open water international airspace between Romania and the Crimean Peninsula, as well as two French Air Force fighters.
Identified aircraft included a Turkish Navy ATR 72-600 maritime reconnaissance plane callsign TRUVA01, a French Air Force Mirage 2000 with the callsign CARNAC11, a second French Air Force Mirage 2000 with the callsign CARNAC12, and a US-made Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis radio electronic aircraft that launched from the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, a major NATO airfield near Constanta, Romania.
The Mirage 2000 is a multi-role fighter usually tasked with air defense or ground attack missions, but for this mission, the French Air Force tasked the fighters with a less typical role: reconnaissance.
CARNAC11 flight, the two Mirage 2000s, were first noticed on civilian radars near the west Romania city of Targu Mures. The Mirage flight probably entered international airspace to the west of Crimea, one to three hours after the Ukrainian drone strikes went in, Kyiv Post research showed.
The Ukrainian military information platform Crimea Wind, citing its own research, said that one of the two French fighters was carrying an advanced electronic signals intelligence (SIGINT) pod called ASTAC. Manufactured by the Meudon, Île-de-France-headquartered military manufacturing conglomerate Thales Group, the ASTAC is the French Air Force’s premier airborne SIGINT device.
This spotting of the ASTAC pod – as yet unconfirmed – was the first report of the French military’s operation of the system near Russian-controlled territory. Other aircraft – NATO or Russian – might have been in the air as well but with their transponders turned off, so they would not be visible to civilian flight trackers.
NATO air ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) units have patrolled Black Sea airspace for decades, however, reconnaissance patrols towards Russia-controlled airspace around Crimea are infrequent. NATO air patrols over the Black Sea with fighter escort are rare. The deployment of French fighters to that airspace hours after Ukrainian strikes against Crimea is, according to open sources, unprecedented for the entire Russo-Ukrainian War.
NATO air planners, on Monday and Tuesday before the mass drone attack, intensified air operations over eastern Romania and the western Black Sea, shifting from a typical once-or-twice-a-week single aircraft patrol pattern to heavy combined surveillance operation with at least four NATO Air Forces taking part.
On Monday, the skies over eastern Romania saw the rare co-location of two AWACS air surveillance aircraft, NATO’s premier airborne early warning platform. When deployed as a NATO asset, AWACS planes are Luxembourg-flagged. A British KC-135 tanker jet was in the vicinity, showing a possible air-refueling mission.
On Tuesday, an AWACS based in Gelsenkirchen Germany flew to eastern Romania to fly a north-south pattern paralleling Crimea for at least four hours. The presence of an AWACS in Romanian airspace for two days running is rare.
Three other intelligence collection aircraft, an un-flagged Bombardier Challenger, a Royal Air Force (RAF) RC-135W Rivet Joint four-engine SIGINT ISR platform, and an Italian Air Force reconnaissance Gulfstream 6550, along with a single French Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter, were spotted above south-east Romania as well on Tuesday.
In early 2025, Ukraine kicked off a long-range bombardment campaign targeting Russian oil refineries. According to Astra, AFU drones have attacked at least 28 fuel and energy facilities in 16 regions of the Russian Federation. Several major facilities, like oil refineries in Tuapse and the western Russian city of Ryazan, have been attacked up to three times.
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