Ukraine Hits Russian Oil Terminal, One Killed

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- Ukraine's SBU claimed a Saturday drone strike on the Tamanneftegaz terminal in Russia's Temryuk district, Krasnodar region, hitting five fuel tanks and two oil loading stands and igniting fires at what it called "the largest liquefied hydrocarbon transshipment complex in southern Russia."
- Russian Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said drone debris sparked a fire in part of the facility, and one person was killed, while Russian outlets reported the Black Sea export terminal in the village of Volna — used for crude oil, petroleum products, and liquefied gas — was damaged.
- Putin acknowledged on Friday that Ukrainian strikes are "causing us damage" to Russian infrastructure, but said Moscow would recover quickly and escalate its own attacks on Ukrainian targets.
- Ukraine's military separately claimed to have hit an oil processing and pumping facility near Kotovo in Russia's Volgograd region, causing a fire that Russian authorities confirmed in an industrial zone.
- The IAEA said power was restored to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after a strike days earlier cut its external electricity supply, a detail that sits beneath the surface of most coverage of the energy campaign.
- The SBU pledged to keep targeting Russia's oil and gas sector, calling it "a source of funding for the war" and stating that "oil revenues are turned into missiles, drones, and ammunition used to attack Ukrainian cities."
- Peace talks remain stalled, with Putin recently dismissing a face-to-face meeting with Zelenskyy, though Trump is set to join a G7 working session with Zelenskyy in France on Tuesday, per a senior US administration official cited by AFP.
Why it matters: Putin's public admission that Ukrainian strikes are "causing us damage" — delivered in his own words on Friday — is a rare Kremlin concession on the toll of attacks on domestic energy infrastructure. The IAEA-confirmed outage and restoration of external power at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, cut by a strike days earlier, shows this energy campaign now carries nuclear-safety stakes, while the stalled peace track leaves the cross-border escalation with no diplomatic off-ramp ahead of Tuesday's Trump-Zelenskyy G7 meeting.


