Ukrainian drones set a fuel-oil terminal on fire in the port of Novorossiysk again overnight on 9 September, monitoring channels reported. Novorossiysk's mayor claimed drone debris came down on enterprise grounds in the Russian city. Ukraine's military later reported strikes on the naval base there, including on warships that carry cruise missiles.

Analysts placed the fire on a fuel-oil terminal

Ukrainian defense news outlet Militarnyi located the strike through geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) analysis, which matches published photos and video against satellite imagery and maps. That work showed drones hitting the mazut (fuel-oil) terminal inside the port in Krasnodar Krai. Fire broke out on the terminal grounds, and at least one storage tank took damage. Around midnight, residents began reporting the sound of drones overhead, Russian air defense fire, and explosions.

The Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ started posting videos of the attack on the port around midnight, further into the morning sharing more footage of the fire at the fuel-oil terminal. Russian news Telegram channel Astra wrote of fires on the grounds of several enterprises and near a residential building, with a column of dark smoke in eyewitness video. Its analyst then established from that footage that the burning object was the Novorossiysk Fuel Oil Terminal. Astra called the work open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis, meaning conclusions drawn from publicly available imagery and records.

Satellites feeding NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), which flags heat sources from orbit, recorded several seats of fire in Novorossiysk after the night raid. An OSINT reading of eyewitness video also placed a fire at an apartment building in the city.

Novorossiysk mayor Andrei Kravchenko claimed overnight that air defenses were still fighting off the drone attack. He stated that drone debris had come down at several enterprises and near a residential building, and claimed that preliminary information showed no casualties. Kravchenko later acknowledged hits on enterprises while describing the cause as "falling debris."

Ukrainian drones and missiles hit the same naval base overnight on 12 August, damaging Kalibr-carrying frigates and stopping all three of the port's grain terminals.

Ukraine's account named ships, the harbor, and the terminal

Robert Brovdi, callsign Madyar, commands Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, the military branch that runs the country's drone units. He said Ukrainian Defense Forces struck the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk in a combined operation overnight, and that the Russians lost several military vessels there, missile carriers among them.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed strikes on Novorossiysk and Krasnodar Krai around midday. He said Ukraine hit a terminal used for shipping oil, military harbor facilities, and warships, including carriers of Kalibr cruise missiles.

No independent assessment of damage to the vessels had emerged by midday, and Russia's defense ministry did not address the naval base.

The port Ukraine keeps returning to

The targeted terminal stores and transships fuel oil, a heavy refinery product, along with light petroleum products, and its throughput runs to about 4 million tons a year. It belongs to the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, the largest seaport in Russia, and counts among the leading enterprises of the city's transport hub.