The string of fires and explosions at Russia’s oil-refining facilities in 2024–2026 has become a phenomenon that goes beyond mere military statistics. This is chemical warfare with a delayed effect, where every Ukrainian Armed Forces strike on Russian oil infrastructure sets off a chain of long-term contamination.

We are witnessing the systemic degradation of Russia’s oil infrastructure — from local fires in 2024 to large-scale damage to ports and pipelines in 2026. Spatial analysis shows that the strikes are concentrated in European Russia — from Kirishi and Ryazan to Samara, Volgograd, Tuapse, and Novorossiysk. These are the nodes that form the axis of chemical loading, where combustion products, heavy metals, dioxins, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) accumulate.

Repeated strikes against the Ryazan, Samara, and Volgograd refinery clusters create a zone of chronic contamination covering densely populated regions of the Volga basin. The southern terminals — Tuapse, Novorossiysk, Taman — are turning into hubs of combined contamination, where petroleum products mix with sea salts and plastics to produce toxic compounds with long-lasting effects.

The chronology testifies to a transition from isolated incidents to a systemic ecological crisis: every fire not only destroys productive capacity but also launches a process of toxic accumulation in soil, water, and the atmosphere. The consequences extend far beyond industrial zones and reach the ecosystems of the Black and Caspian seas.

This is not merely a geography of fires; it is a portrait of gradual chemical exhaustion that grows deeper and more dangerous for the ecosystems of Eastern Europe with each passing year. A full register of accidents and fires at Russian refineries and energy-sector facilities — including those caused by Ukrainian strikes — is provided in the annex at the end of the article.

Tuapse: a Double Strike and an Ecological Crisis

On 16 and 20 April 2026, drones struck Russia’s Krasnodar Krai. The targets reportedly included the seaport and the oil refinery in Tuapse. Eyewitnesses reported a series of explosions in the Tuapse, Gelendzhik, and Anapa areas. A large-scale fire broke out in the seaport’s territory; analysts at the Astra Telegram channel recorded more than ten ignition points in the tank farm of the Tuapse refinery. After the strike on the night of 16 April, Russian rescuers spent several days extinguishing the fire.

The Tuapse refinery is one of Russia’s largest, specialising in primary crude processing. It belongs to Rosneft and operates jointly with the maritime terminal. Its capacity is approximately 12 million tonnes of crude per year; a substantial share of output is exported.

After the 20 April strike, the fire at the maritime terminal continued for several days.

On Thursday, 23 April, the Krasnodar Krai operational headquarters advised residents of Tuapse not to leave their homes unnecessarily and not to open windows. Rospotrebnadzor recorded benzene, xylene, and soot concentrations in the air exceeding maximum permissible levels by a factor of two to three. Residents were advised to perform wet cleaning more frequently, rinse their nose, eyes, and throat, and to wear masks when going outside.

Smog from the fire reached Stavropol, and on 22 April — according to ecologist Georgiy Kavanosyan — it reached Sochi. Local residents complained on VKontakte communities about “oil rain”, posting photos of contaminated land, dogs, and birds, and discussing how to protect themselves from petroleum products that are now everywhere — even in drinking wells. They mocked official statements that pollutant concentrations “do not exceed the norm” and complained about inaction by officials at every level.

The Moscow Times has cited ecologists’ assessments. Yevgeny Vitishko called the events “the largest ecological catastrophe in the region” of recent times — capable of harming the environment for several years to come. The Soviet-era chemist Vil Mirzayanov — a participant in the Novichok development programme and the first person to publicly reveal its existence, back in 1992 (it was Novichok that, according to international investigations, was used to poison Alexei Navalny in 2020) — warned that the combustion products contain polyaromatic compounds, including carcinogens hazardous to human health. One ecologist who asked to remain anonymous noted that part of the harmful emissions may fall as acid rain — Tuapse residents had already documented precipitation with an oily film and black particles on the streets.

When It Is Not Just Oil Burning

A large-scale fire at a facility storing or processing sour crude is not merely a big blaze. It is a full-fledged chemical catastrophe with a fundamentally different hazard profile from burning wood, coal, or even ordinary crude. Instead of “smoke plus soot,” what forms is a multi-component toxic environment containing nerve agents, acids, delayed-action asphyxiants, and ultra-persistent carcinogens.

History already provides analogues: the Kuwaiti oil-well fires of 1991, the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill of 2010, and accidents at the Ufa refinery. After each of these events, morbidity in affected regions rose for 5–10 years, while soil and water remained toxic for generations.

The Russian context adds another dimension: the Russian oil industry is not a purely civilian sector. It is part of a closed cycle that fuels the army and supplies the defence-industrial complex with explosive precursors and rocket-fuel components. That is why the question “what is burning in Tuapse” extends far beyond ecology.

Who, Where, When, and How Severely Will Be Affected

Before turning to toxicology, the limits of the claims must be drawn honestly. A fire is not a “cloud of death” that uniformly blankets everything around it. Its impact has a clear geometry and unfolds in stages. Every claim that follows must therefore be read across three simultaneous dimensions — geographical, temporal, and medical.

Where (the geography of harm)

Acute toxic loading is high only within a specific sector, defined by a combination of meteorological factors:

• Wind direction and speed — the principal factor. The hardest-hit population centres are those on the leeward side of the epicentre. In the first hours, the upwind side often receives many times less poison.
• Humidity and temperature inversion. High humidity combined with inversion presses the smoke plume to the ground, raising near-surface concentrations several-fold.
• Precipitation. Rain inside the plume is not atmospheric cleansing; it is concentrated acid-organic fallout onto soil, roofs, and farmland. It can fall tens of kilometres from the fire itself.
• Terrain. Valleys, depressions, and lowlands accumulate gases heavier than air (H₂S, SO₂, metal carbonyls) — like an open well.

Indicative response zones:

• 0–10 km on the leeward side — acute injury; mandatory evacuation.
• 10–50 km — air monitoring, evacuation of risk groups, indoor-shelter regime.
• 50–300 km — the plume disperses, but heavy-metal, PAH, and dioxin fallout may settle in patches and be re-mobilised by subsequent rain.
• Hundreds to thousands of kilometres — no longer about acute intoxication, but about transboundary transport of persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals.

When (the timeline)

• Minutes to hours: H₂S, HCN, CO, acrolein. Acutely lethal in the near radius.
• 24–72 hours: phosgene, metal carbonyls — delayed death from pulmonary oedema after evacuation.
• Days to weeks: cardiovascular exacerbations driven by PM2.5; asthma flares; heart attacks in risk groups.
• Months to years: chronic respiratory disease, immune disorders, depression.
• Decades: oncology, teratogenesis, degraded soil and water bodies, dioxin accumulation in food chains.

Who (differential vulnerability)

The notion that “everyone breathes the smoke equally” is a fallacy. The same air imposes very different burdens on different people, and this must be stated plainly:

• Children. Higher breathing rate, thinner mucous membranes, a developing CNS. Toxin dose per kilogram of body mass is two to three times higher than for adults.
• Pregnant women. The placenta is not a barrier to PM or dioxins; risk of miscarriage, growth retardation, and birth defects rises.
• The elderly. Reduced toxin clearance, rigid vasculature, diminished pulmonary reserve. Risk of heart attack and stroke spikes in the first days.
• Patients with chronic disease — asthmatics, COPD, diabetics, cardiovascular and oncological patients, those with immunodeficiencies. For them, levels “tolerable for the healthy” may be fatal. The specific prognosis is always individual, tied to diagnosis, stage, and concurrent therapy.
• Healthy adults — the most resilient group, but they too receive a dose of persistent toxins whose effects will surface years later.

The framing conclusion. When discussing the consequences of a specific fire, one must always distinguish geographical sector, temporal horizon, and vulnerability group. Without this, any figure is either panic-mongering on empty ground or an underestimation of a real catastrophe.

Why Sour Crude Is More Dangerous Than Ordinary Oil

Russian Urals-grade crude is among the heavy and sour grades — its sulphur content is approximately 1.2–1.5%, which makes it less ecologically benign and more expensive to refine compared with lighter grades (Brent, Ukrainian Diamant Nafta).

Ordinary crude, when it burns, yields CO, CO₂, soot, and a little SO₂. All bad — but predictable. Sour crude is an entirely different category of risk, for three reasons.

First — high sulphur content. Sulphur in crude (mercaptans, sulphides, thiophenes, thiols) follows two fundamentally different, parallel pathways during combustion, depending on the local conditions inside the flame:

• In oxygen-rich zones (bright flame), oxidation dominates: organic sulphur + O₂ → SO₂, with some SO₃. In the atmosphere, after absorbing moisture and undergoing photochemical transformation, SO₂ produces sulphurous and sulphuric acid — the basis of acid rain.
• In oxygen-depleted, reducing zones (smouldering, pyrolysis on the “rich” side of the flame, periphery of the smoke plume), thermal decomposition of sulphur-organics dominates: the principal products are hydrogen sulphide (H₂S), mercaptans, and carbonyl sulphide (COS).

This is not a chain “sulphur → H₂S → SO₂”; these are two distinct streams of poison that arise simultaneously in different parts of the same fire. They differ in chemistry, in their mechanism of action on the human body, and in their environmental fate:

	H₂S	SO₂ (and derivatives H₂SO₃/H₂SO₄)
Sulphur oxidation state	Reduced (−2)	Oxidised (+4/+6)
Conditions of formation	Pyrolysis in oxygen-poor zones	Oxidation in oxygen-rich zones
Principal mechanism of harm	Neurotoxin; blocks cytochrome oxidase → cellular respiration shutdown	Irritant/corrosive → chemical burn of airways, bronchospasm
Environmental fate	Slow atmospheric oxidation to SO₂; local poisoning of soil and water by sulphides	Acid rain; acidification of soils and water bodies over wide areas

In other words, a sour-crude fire releases simultaneously a fast-acting nerve poison and a slow corrosive acid. Protection and response measures for each are different.

Second — metals in the crude. Vanadium, nickel, and iron are not merely “contaminants.” They are catalysts: they accelerate the formation of dioxins, generate metal carbonyls (extremely toxic volatile compounds), and amplify the toxicity of PM2.5 microparticles.

Third — the thermal structure of the fire. Real-world combustion (unlike laboratory combustion) always contains low-temperature zones and a cooled smoke plume. Those are precisely the conditions that favour the synthesis of phosgene, acrolein, and hydrogen cyanide.

Hence three parallel hazard streams — acute toxicological, slow ecological, and systemic logistical. We address them in turn.

The Toxic Profile of the Fire: Four Floors of Lethal Hazard

Killer gases: minutes-scale lethality

The first contour comprises substances that kill almost instantly.

Hydrogen sulphide (H₂S). Forms during thermal decomposition of sulphur-containing compounds. The mechanism is simple and merciless: it blocks cytochrome oxidase, halting cellular respiration. Death follows in anything from instantaneous to ten minutes. The principal treachery: at lethal concentrations, H₂S stops smelling. The olfactory nerve is paralysed, the human being loses their only natural hazard sensor, and dies without warning.

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN). A combustion product of nitrogen-containing organics. Same mechanism as H₂S but stronger — 5–15 minutes to death.

Carbon monoxide (CO). The classic of incomplete combustion. Binds haemoglobin, induces hypoxia. Slower — hours — but effective.

Delayed killers: working over 24–72 hours

This floor is the most insidious. A person evacuates, feels unwell but alive, returns home — and dies 24–48 hours later.

Acrolein. A product of incomplete oxidation of unsaturated hydrocarbons. Causes uncontrolled tearing, lung burn, haemorrhagic oedema. The first-minute effect is to deprive a person of the ability to see and evacuate.

Phosgene (COCl₂). Forms in the cool zones of the flame in the presence of a chlorine source — sea salt, PVC fragments, chlorinated additives. Hydrolyses in the alveoli into HCl; pulmonary surfactant is destroyed. “Dry” pulmonary oedema appears 24–48 hours later. At the moment of poisoning there is almost no cough — a false sense of well-being — followed by acute respiratory failure.

SO₂ → H₂SO₄. A product of sulphur oxidation in oxygen-rich zones. In the moist airways, sulphuric acid is generated in situ: chemical burn, bronchospasm, asthma exacerbation, alveolar damage. Action is immediate.

Nickel carbonyl [Ni(CO)₄]. Forms from nickel catalysts and steel structures in the presence of CO (Ni + 4CO → Ni(CO)₄). One of the most toxic compounds known to toxicology. Lethal cumulative dose is around 30 mg. Pulmonary and cerebral oedema 36 hours after exposure.

A conclusion that virtually all response protocols ignore: an evacuee in the first hours is not safe. Medical observation must continue for at least 72 hours, and for risk groups — up to two weeks.

Long-lived toxins: a legacy across generations

This is the floor where the “accident” ends and the “demography” begins.

Dioxins (PCDDs/PCDFs). Form in the cool zones of the smoke plume from combustion products in the presence of chlorine (sea salt, PVC, chlorinated impurities) and catalysts (copper, iron). IARC Group 1 carcinogen, immune suppressor (“chemical AIDS”), endocrine disruptor. Effects span chloracne, teratogenesis, endometriosis. Half-life in the human body — 7–11 years; in soil — decades. A sour-crude fire in a port zone is an ideal dioxin generator.

PAHs (benzo(a)pyrene and its family). Products of incomplete combustion. IARC Group 1 carcinogen. Settle on soils, migrate into water bodies, accumulate in fish. Persistence — months to years in the body, years in the environment.

Vanadium and nickel. Native components of heavy sour crude, concentrated in combustion residues and slag. Cause lung cancer, neurotoxicity, persistent allergies. In soil — years to decades.

Toxic soot: why PM2.5 is not just “dust”

One of the most dangerous popular illusions is the picture of soot as merely “dirty dust.” In reality, fine (PM2.5) and ultrafine (PM0.1) particles are not “particles” but agglomerates — complex assemblies in which the carbon scaffold is merely a carrier.

On the surfaces of such particles are fixed:

• Heavy-metal compounds — vanadium, nickel, lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium.
• Persistent organic pollutants — PAHs, dioxins, furans.
• Strong-acid residues — sulphuric, nitric, organic acids.
• Free radicals and reactive oxygen species — initiators of oxidative cellular damage.

The points of entry are mucous membranes: eyes, nasopharynx, bronchi, alveoli. The particular danger of PM0.1 is that ultrafine particles traverse the alveolar barrier and enter the bloodstream directly. From there — heart, brain, liver, kidneys, placenta.

Each such inhalation is therefore a courier delivery of carcinogens, neurotoxins, and heavy metals straight into the blood, bypassing nearly all defensive barriers. This is a fundamentally different mechanism from that of classical smoke, on which the older civil-defence protocols were built.

Documented consequences of prolonged exposure to toxic PM:

• Respiratory: COPD, asthma, interstitial fibrosis, lung cancer.
• Cardiovascular: accelerated atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, ischaemic stroke, arrhythmias.
• Nervous system: cognitive decline, accelerated dementia via systemic neuroinflammation, depression.
• Reproductive: reduced fertility, low birth weight, preterm birth.
• Metabolic: insulin resistance, exacerbation of diabetes.

PM is not a “byproduct” of the fire. It is the principal transport system delivering all the other toxins straight into the blood. That is why a dust mask alone here is no defence — it is fatal self-deception.

Quantitative reference: the order-of-magnitude framework

To grasp the orders of magnitude — the key thresholds in ppm and mg/m³. The following compares occupational standards, IDLH values (NIOSH), and lethal concentrations; it is not a single legal regime but an orientation.

Substance	Sensory threshold	Workplace exposure limit	IDLH / lethal
H₂S	Smell from 0.008 ppm	10 ppm	Olfactory paralysis 100–150 ppm; death 700+ ppm
SO₂	Irritation 1–5 ppm	2 ppm	IDLH 100 ppm; lethal 400–500 ppm in 30 min
HCN	Bitter almonds ~1 ppm	4.7 ppm	IDLH 50 ppm; death 270 ppm immediate
CO	Odourless	25 ppm	IDLH 1200 ppm; death 1600 ppm in 2 h
Phosgene	Fresh hay 0.4 ppm	0.1 ppm	IDLH 2 ppm; lethal 50 ppm in short exposure
Acrolein	Irritation 0.1 ppm	0.1 ppm	IDLH 2 ppm
Ni(CO)₄	No reliable odour	0.001 ppm	IDLH 2 ppm; death ~30 mg cumulative
PM2.5	Imperceptible	WHO annual mean 5 μg/m³	In a fire plume — thousands of μg/m³
Dioxins (TEQ)	Imperceptible	TWI (EFSA 2018): 2 pg/kg bw per week; 2025 EFSA draft — reduction to 0.6 pg	Cumulative; effects manifest over years

Three takeaways from the table:

• For phosgene and nickel carbonyl, lethal concentrations lie below 2 ppm — a level the human body cannot detect before symptoms develop. No filter mask without a specialised cartridge offers protection in principle.
• H₂S has an odour threshold roughly ten thousand times lower than its lethal concentration — but at the lethal level the smell disappears. The nose cannot be trusted as a hazard sensor.
• Dioxins act in picograms per kilogram of body weight. Chronic exposure does not require being inside the plume — eating fish, milk, or vegetables from the region a year after the fire is sufficient.

A Cascading Injury System: Four Levels with a Reinforcing Loop

The previous section sorted the toxins by time of action. The same information, re-read by mechanism of harm, yields not four parallel blows but a four-level system with direct amplification between levels. This is not a sum of effects; it is a feedback cascade in which each preceding level opens the door to the next.

Level 1 — instant shutdown (neurotoxins: H₂S, HCN, CO). Cytochrome-oxidase blockade halts cellular respiration. The person dies within minutes — before they can feel a burn or shortness of breath, that is, before subsequent levels develop. Where Level 1 does not kill, it leaves survivors with CNS damage that reduces respiratory-muscle tone and cough efficiency — directly weakening the first barrier ahead of Level 2.

Level 2 — destruction of the pulmonary barrier (acrolein, phosgene, SO₂, carbonyls). Chemical burn and oedema. Phosgene hydrolysis in the alveoli destroys surfactant; oxygen-dependent particle clearance falls. This directly amplifies Level 3: the same lungs now receive the same PM2.5 doses, but with their clearance system disabled. The dose effect grows multiplicatively, not arithmetically.

Level 3 — systemic delivery into the blood (PM2.5/PM0.1). Ultrafine agglomerates carrying adsorbed metals, PAHs, and dioxins cross the alveolar barrier into the systemic circulation: systemic inflammation, endothelial dysfunction, thrombosis within days. In parallel, PM becomes the carrier for Level 4 — it is on these particles that dioxins are delivered to fat depots, the placenta, and the brain. Without Level 3, Level 4 does not unfold so quickly or so systemically.

Level 4 — long-term immune-endocrine remodelling (dioxins). Accumulating in adipose tissue over years, dioxins disrupt immunity and endocrine regulation. Here the loop closes: an immunosuppressed organism is far more sensitive to any subsequent toxic stress — including PM-driven inflammation. Each new exposure (a new fire, background pollution, a seasonal infection) lands on ground prepared by the previous one.

Key analytical conclusion. These are not four separate effects to be added together with the advice “treat each.” It is a self-amplifying system: Level 2 opens the path to Level 3, Level 3 delivers Level 4, and Level 4 makes the body susceptible to renewed Levels 2–3. Civilian “fire-response” protocols fail precisely because they assume one mechanism of harm rather than a feedback cascade. That is also why medical monitoring must be multi-year, not one-off.

The model as a forecasting tool

The cascade framework is needed not for description but for forecasting. Given the type of fire, the meteorological conditions, and the fuel composition, one can determine in advance which of the four levels will dominate — and prioritise evacuation, medical response, and ecological monitoring accordingly.

• Level 1 dominant (H₂S, HCN, CO) — high acute mortality within 0–10 km on the leeward side; the long tail is comparatively small. Priority: rapid evacuation and recovery operations, not extensive medical surveillance.
• Levels 2+3 dominant (acrolein, phosgene, SO₂ + PM) — peak load on the healthcare system in the 24–72-hour window: delayed pulmonary oedema, heart attacks, strokes. Priority: deploy pulmonology and cardiology reserves, conduct 72-hour monitoring of evacuees.
• Levels 3+4 dominant (PM as a carrier of dioxins, ground deposition) — long-term demographic effect: oncology, immunodeficiency, teratogenesis at 5–10–20 years. Priority: multi-year monitoring of food chains and birth outcomes, closure of local water and food sources.

The practical upshot: before the plume reaches the city, the meteorological forecast and the characteristics of the burning facility allow one to determine which scenario is unfolding, and to mobilise the right resources rather than spend them on the wrong response.

Limits of the model

Honest analysis requires stating where the model ceases to work or under-estimates:

• Strong wind (>50 km/h). The cascade is “stretched” over hundreds of kilometres: local concentrations fall, but the affected area grows. The model needs spatial scaling — the 0–10 km zone is no longer critical, while Levels 3–4 gain weight in distant territories.
• Absence of chlorine sources (inland facilities far from the sea, with no PVC infrastructure nearby). Dioxin and phosgene synthesis falls sharply — Level 4 is weakened, Level 2 partially as well. Risk remains, but the demographic tail is smaller.
• Rapid, high-quality firefighting (within the first 2–4 hours). Levels 2–3 may not reach critical values — phosgene and PM lack time to accumulate to dangerous concentrations. In Russian conditions this is a rare scenario, but for cross-jurisdictional comparison it must be allowed for.
• Effect of repeated fires in the same area. The model describes a single cycle. If fires recur at intervals of weeks or months (which matches the Russian pattern of strikes against refineries), the effect does not add — it multiplies through the Level-4 closing loop: each subsequent fire lands on an already immunosuppressed population. This requires a separate model overlay and separate data.

The model is not an absolute but a working instrument. Its strength lies in the transparency of its limits, not in a claim of universality.

A Sharp Comparison: Ordinary Fire vs Sour-Crude Fire

Parameter	Ordinary fire	Sour-crude fire
Principal cause of death	CO + smoke	Neurotoxins + lung burn + delayed oedema
Immediate threat	Soot, heat, CO	H₂S (minutes), acrolein (blindness)
Delayed mortality	Rare	Routine (phosgene, carbonyls)
Chronic consequences	COPD, rarely cancer	Cancer, immunodeficiency, birth defects, endocrine disorders
Ecosystem recovery	Years	Decades — never (dioxins)
Respiratory protection	FFP2/FFP3 works	Useless — supplied-air respirators required

Ecology: Acid, Soil, Food, Climate

The “black rain”

SO₂ + H₂O → H₂SO₄. An oily acid rain scorches foliage, acidifies soils and water bodies, and destroys soil microbiota. This is no metaphor — it is what residents along the Black Sea coast have already documented after fires at the Tuapse terminal: an oily film on cars, leaves, and laundry; scorched patches on tree foliage; fish kill in the coastal strip.

Contamination across decades

Soil. Petroleum crust + heavy metals + dioxins = either sterility or transformation into a toxic substrate. The only proper remediation is removal of the upper layer and disposal at a special-purpose landfill. In Russian conditions this is a fantasy: there are no suitable landfills, no political will, and no independent monitoring.

Water. PAHs, metals, and dioxins migrate into groundwater. Drinking wells must be closed for years. Maritime ports are a separate story: contamination of coastal waters by PAHs and metals is a long-term blow to fishing and tourism — that is, to the very “peaceful” industries that the Kremlin likes to use as cover for facilities of military significance.

Bioaccumulation: danger via the dinner plate

Dioxins and PAHs accumulate:

• in fish (concentration factors up to 10,000× background);
• in milk and animal fat;
• in vegetables grown on contaminated fields.

Practical implication: local food from regions of large-scale fires becomes dangerous for generations. This is not an emotional claim; it is confirmed by data from Alaska, Kuwait, and Seveso.

Ecosystem degradation

Acidification → die-off of amphibians, molluscs, sensitive plants. The biocoenosis is replaced by tolerant weeds and fungi. Full recovery — 50+ years.

A climatological footprint: a local accident with planetary consequences

A large-scale oil fire is not just a regional story but a global one. It leaves an entirely measurable footprint on the planet’s atmospheric and climatic processes.

• CO₂ and methane emissions. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes from a single tank farm — comparable to the daily emissions of a small country.
• Soot on glaciers and snow. Dark particles transported through the atmosphere settle on high-latitude snowpack and glaciers, lower the albedo, and accelerate melting. For the Arctic this is a direct degradation factor; Russian fires, via atmospheric transport, contribute directly.
• Sulphur and nitrogen loading of the atmosphere — acidification of precipitation thousands of kilometres from the source, regardless of borders.
• Aerosol plumes influence cloud and precipitation formation and local atmospheric circulation — and therefore agricultural yields in regions that are quite distant.

Smoke from Tuapse or Ryazan is not only regional toxicology, it is also a small but additional weight on the scales of global climate shifts. One fire — almost nothing; dozens of facilities in a state of continuous smouldering — already a meaningful factor.

A Practical Block: What to Do and What Not to Do

❌ What does NOT work

• FFP2/FFP3 and cotton-gauze masks. They do not retain H₂S, HCN, phosgene, acrolein, dioxins, or carbonyls. Only dust and a little soot. A mask under a cloud of hydrogen sulphide is psychological self-deception, nothing more.
• Sheltering in basements and lower floors. H₂S, SO₂, and carbonyls are heavier than air and creep along the ground. An unventilated basement without sealing is a death trap.
• Waiting for it to “pass on its own.” Many toxins act with a delay. Symptoms — at 24–48 hours. Feeling fine now guarantees nothing.

✅ What works

• Evacuation. Immediate, perpendicular to the wind, at least 10–15 km. Up to 30 km if the wind shifts.
• Supplied-air respiratory protection. Self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). Filter masks are no substitute.
• Sealing the premises (if evacuation is impossible): tape windows, switch off intake ventilation, block doors with damp cloth.
• Water and food — only from sources known to be clean. Local wells — off limits for months.
• After return — do not touch the oily fallout without gloves and protection. Soil and water testing for dioxins, metals, and PAHs is not “just in case” but mandatory.

👨‍⚕️ Medical monitoring (critical)

Priority — the high-vulnerability groups (children, pregnant women, the elderly, the chronically ill). For them, examination is not “desirable” but mandatory and early.

Minimum panel for residents of the affected zone:

• Hepatic function (ALT, AST, GGT).
• Renal function (creatinine, urea).
• Complete blood count (leukocytes, platelets).
• Immune status (T cells, immunoglobulins).
• Tumour markers — at 6–12 months and annually thereafter.
• Pregnant women — prenatal screening for malformations.
• Chronic patients — therapy adjustments anticipating exacerbations (bronchodilators, anticoagulants, etc.).

A Real-World Scenario: What Happened in Tuapse, 16–24 April

To strip the analysis of abstraction, the framework set out above is now applied to a concrete case — the series of fires at the Tuapse oil terminal and refinery following the strikes of 16 and 20 April 2026. The scenario is reconstructed not from a hypothetical wind but from the actual meteorological conditions of that week.

What the forecast said and what the facts confirmed (72 hours from the second strike):

• 20–22 April — steady wind from the SSW, 30–50 km/h.
• Morning of 24 April — heavy rain: 22 mm by morning, 41 mm cumulatively over three days.
• Humidity 80–90%, temperature 8–10 °C, low freezing level (~1100 m); a nocturnal temperature inversion was likely.
• Wind shifted to W and NW only from 26–27 April.

Where the plume went. An SSW wind meant the plume was carried to the NNE — inland, not out to sea. Along its axis lay the densely populated, agricultural part of Krasnodar Krai and Adygea:

• 0–15 km — Tuapse itself and the Tuapse river valley: acute zone, mandatory evacuation of the leeward side. This is precisely where the operational headquarters forbade opening windows, and where Rospotrebnadzor recorded benzene and xylene exceeding maximum permissible levels by a factor of two to three.
• 50–70 km — Goryachy Klyuch, Apsheronsk, Khadyzhensk: high-exposure zone, reached by the same smog trail that arrived in Sochi on 22 April.
• 100–150 km — outskirts of Krasnodar, Belorechensk, the exit onto the Kuban plains: medium exposure with deposition of persistent toxins on soil.
• 200+ km — northern Krasnodar Krai and Rostov Oblast: zone of slow PAH, metal, and dioxin transport.

What the rain did on 24 April. This was not atmospheric cleansing. It was a literal black acid rain at the start of the growing season — falling on the fields of Adygea and central Krasnodar Krai, in the phase when the soil actively absorbs moisture and winter wheat is at the tillering stage. Dioxins, PAHs, and heavy metals settled on arable land and pasture, opening a path into the food chains (milk, meat, grain) of one of Russia’s principal agricultural regions. The oily precipitation with black particles that Tuapse residents had already documented as “oil rain” is a direct illustration of this mechanism.

Net effect over 72 hours:

1. Acute zone — the coastal Tuapse valley. On this meteorological window, the plume did not reach Sochi or Lazarevskoye (the southern coast).
2. Medium zone — the industrial-agricultural corridor Krasnodar–Apsheronsk–Khadyzhensk: potentially hundreds of thousands of people exposed to PM2.5, SO₂, and PAHs.
3. Long tail — the Kuban basin, agricultural soils at the start of vegetation: accumulation of persistent toxins in Russia’s food supply.
4. Climatological tail — aerosol transport across the foothills of the North Caucasus into central Russia and toward the Caspian.

This scenario rests on a real weather window that closed within 3–4 days. A different wind configuration would have produced a different geometry of catastrophe, but the logic remains: acute injury at tens of kilometres, medium-term injury at hundreds, persistent toxins at thousands. That logic must be built into the response protocol in advance — not learned from the news.

Conclusion: a Different Class of Catastrophe — a Different Protocol

A sour-crude fire is not a local emergency. It is a long-term toxic scenario whose consequences extend beyond the ignition zone and surface over years:

• oncological morbidity,
• immunodeficiencies (“chemical AIDS”),
• reproductive disorders and birth defects,
• ecosystem degradation across generations.

The protective tools appropriate to an ordinary fire are here fatally dangerous. An FFP2 mask under a cloud of hydrogen sulphide is not protection; it is a ticket to the morgue with the illusion of dignity.

The principal systemic conclusion — for civil protection, for medicine, and for ecological monitoring alike: sour-crude fires require a dedicated response protocol — evacuation, medical, ecological — at the level today reserved for nuclear-plant accidents. Using standard “fire” protocols here means additional casualties not from flame, but from chemistry.

The Russian Oil Industry Is Not a Civilian Sector

So far we have been speaking about chemistry, medicine, ecology, and practical defence — that is, about how to respond to a fire. There remains a question of a different order: why are there so many of these fires, and why is this what burns? Here we must move from toxicology to geopolitics — and it turns out that geopolitics is tightly coupled to toxicology.

Russian oil refining is not about petrol for private cars. It is a node in the network of the military-industrial complex. A modern refinery is not a one-product factory but a producer of dozens of fractions and intermediates — many of which have direct or dual-use military applications:

• Fuel for tanks, IFVs, and aircraft — diesel, aviation kerosene (TS-1, RT). Without it neither a Su-34 nor an air-launched Kalibr leaves the ground.
• Rocket-fuel components. Petrochemical derivatives feed the synthesis of UDMH (heptyl), kerosenes of the “Sintin” class, and other components of liquid rocket propellants.
• Explosive precursors. Toluene → TNT. Aromatics — feedstock for nitration. Butadiene, styrene — components of solid rocket propellants via synthetic rubbers.
• Lubricants and additives for military equipment, without which a tank column becomes scrap metal within a week of forced marching.

The Ryazan and Volgograd refineries, the Novoshakhtinsk plant, and the Novorossiysk and Tuapse oil terminals are not merely “civilian enterprises.” They are links in a logistics chain that, every morning, fuels the very military machine that kills people in Ukraine. Disabling one of these links means hundreds of tonnes of diesel less at the front per day, and dozens of bomber sorties less per week.

That is why the framing “clean ecology vs dirty industry” does not work here. Each destroyed distillation column is not only a column of smoke over Tuapse — it is a batch of aviation kerosene that will not now be produced, with which a bomber will not be fuelled for a strike on Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, or Odesa.

The question is not whether Ukraine has the right to reduce aviation-kerosene supplies to the army that is attacking it. The question is whether a country against which a war of annihilation is being waged can be made to choose between its own survival and the ecological sterility of the aggressor’s territory. International humanitarian law gives an unambiguous answer: priority lies with those under attack, not with those whose economy fuels the attack. Anything else is either moral blindness, or a symmetrical manipulation by those who started the war and now seek a way to prolong it with impunity.

The Geneva Framework: Who Is Violating Whom

Modern international humanitarian law — in particular Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 — sets out several key prohibitions:

• The civilian population may not be the object of attack (Art. 51).
• Methods and means of warfare that may cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment are prohibited (Arts. 35 and 55).
• Military objectives — those that “by their nature, location, purpose, or use, make an effective contribution to military action” (Art. 52) — are lawful targets.

Let us invert the usual frame: instead of asking “what is permitted to Ukraine,” let us ask “what is Russia actually doing.”

On Art. 51 (prohibition of attacks on civilians). The Russian army systematically attacks residential districts of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kyiv. Shahed drones and Kalibr cruise missiles, launched on fuel produced at the very refineries under discussion here, deliberately strike civilians — documented by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, BBC, Reuters, and AP.

On Arts. 35 and 55 (prohibition of disproportionate environmental harm). The destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant in June 2023 — the largest ecological catastrophe in 21st-century Europe, with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of petroleum products, fertilisers, and heavy metals carried into the Black Sea. The seizure of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — a chronic radiological blackmail of the entire continent. The targeted shelling of Ukrainian oil depots and storage facilities (Kremenchuk, Vasylkiv, Lysychansk, Odesa) — each instance accompanied by large-scale toxin releases into the waters of the Dnipro and the Black Sea.

On Art. 52 (the definition of military objectives). Russian refineries, oil depots, and port terminals serving military logistics are — under any good-faith reading of IHL — dual-use objects, a substantial share of which fall within the definition of military objectives. Strikes on them are not violations of the Geneva Conventions in the sense Russian propaganda seeks to imply.

In other words: the norms of the Geneva Conventions are indeed being violated — but it is the side that started the war, not the side defending itself, that does so systematically, on a massive scale, and deliberately. Any attempt to equate strikes on Russian military-industrial infrastructure with attacks on Ukrainian cities is not a legal argument; it is a propagandistic inversion.

At the same time, there remains an open question to which Ukrainian and international expert communities must respond honestly: the long-term ecological footprint of refinery fires. Dioxins, heavy metals, and PAHs do not respect borders — air masses, the Black Sea, and river basins transport them across thousands of kilometres. A monitoring and response protocol is therefore needed both in occupied territories and in neighbouring states, and inside Ukraine itself — to document possible transboundary contamination and to provide a scientifically grounded response to it.

And finally. Every column of black smoke over a Russian oil terminal is two parallel storylines. The first is about toxicology and risks for people hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre. The second is about a logistics chain in which the petrol pump at a Krasnodar filling station and the shell depot in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast are links of one network. To read the two storylines apart is to understand neither.

Author — Vladislav Balinskyy, head of the Odesa branch of the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine (NECU), head of the “Green Leaf” NGO, chemist and biologist.

Annex: A Chronological Register of Accidents at Russian Refineries and Energy-Sector Facilities, 2024–2026

(As of 20 April 2026; including incidents resulting from Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure.)

2024

• 25 January — UAV strike on the Tuapse refinery; fire on the vacuum unit.
• 28 January — strike on the oil depot in Kotelnich (Kirov Oblast); fire.
• 3 February — fire at the Volgograd refinery (AVT-5 unit).
• 9 February — fire at the Ilsky refinery (AVT-6 unit).
• 13 March — strike on the Ryazan refinery complex; AT-6 and AVT-4 units damaged.
• 13 March — strike on the Novoshakhtinsk refinery; production halted.
• 16 March — fire at the Syzran refinery (AVT-6 unit).
• 23 March — strike on the Kuibyshev refinery; fires on AVT-4 and AVT-5 units.
• 2 April — fire at TANECO (AVT-7 unit).
• 1 May — fire at the Ryazan refinery complex (AVT-3 unit).
• 12 May — strike on the Volgograd refinery; fire on AVT-1 unit.
• 17 May — fire at the Tuapse refinery (propane-butane rectification section).
• 19 May — strike on the Slavyansk refinery; production halted.
• 6 June — strike on the Novoshakhtinsk refinery; both AVT units halted.
• 22 July — fire at the Tuapse refinery after UAV-debris fall.
• 12 August — fire at the Omsk refinery (AVT unit).
• 26 August — second fire at the Omsk refinery; AVT unit halted.
• 28 August — strike on the oil depot in Kamensky District, Rostov Oblast.
• 28 August — strike on the oil depot in Kotelnich (Kirov Oblast).
• 1 September — fire at the Moscow refinery (Euro+ complex).
• 10 September — accident at the Yaroslavl refinery; catalytic-cracking unit halted.

2025

• 4 October and 14 September — fires at Kirishinefteorgsintez (KINEF).
• 24 and 18 September — strikes on Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat.
• 12 December and 1 October — fires at Yaroslavnefteorgsintez (YANOS).
• 15 November, 23 October, 5 September, 2 August, 24 February — series of strikes on the Ryazan refinery complex.
• 20 September and 2 August — strikes on the Novokuibyshevsk refinery.
• 28 August — strike on the Kuibyshev refinery.
• 5 December, 15 August, 4 March, 19 February — strikes on the Syzran refinery.
• 15 October — strike on Ufaneftekhim.
• 3 March — fire at the Ufa refinery.
• 11 and 14 November, 10 August, 11 February — strikes on the Saratov refinery.
• 3 November and 6 October — strikes on the Tuapse refinery.

2026

• 11 February — strike on the Volgograd refinery; production halted.
• 12 February — fire at the Ukhta refinery (AVT-1 unit).
• 17 February — fire at the Ilsky refinery.
• 17 and 15 February, 21 January — fires at the port of Taman.
• 13 January — strike on two CPC tankers.
• 14 and 21 January — fires at the Afipsky refinery from UAV-debris fall.
• 21 March — strike on the Saratov refinery (AVT-6 unit).
• 23 February — strike on the Kaleykino oil-pumping station (Transneft).
• 2 March — fire at the Novorossiysk port terminal.
• 12 March — fire at the oil depot in Tikhoretsky District.
• 22–31 March — series of strikes on the ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga.
• 25 March — fire at the Novatek complex in Ust-Luga; export of petroleum products halted.
• 26 March — strike on Kirishinefteorgsintez (KINEF); fire, partial shutdown.
• 2 April — fire at the Novo-Ufa refinery (AVT-5 unit).
• 5 April — UAV strike on the Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez (NORSI) refinery; fire and production halt.
• 6 April — strike on the port of Novorossiysk (Sheskharis terminal).
• 6 April — strike on Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) facilities.
• 16 and 20 April — strikes on the seaport and oil refinery in Tuapse.