Drone Strike Sets Russian “Shadow Fleet” Tanker Ablaze Inside Rostov Port

A Russian oil tanker caught fire overnight at the port of Rostov-on-Don following a large-scale drone attack, according to Rostov regional governor Yuriy Slyusar on December 18.

Slyusar said the vessel was damaged during the attack and that two members of its crew were killed, three wounded. Rostov Mayor Aleksandr Skryabin later confirmed that the fire occurred aboard the tanker itself and that emergency services were working to extinguish the blaze.

According to Skryabin, the ship was moored at a pier in the city’s western residential district at the time of the drone strike. He added that, preliminarily, authorities managed to prevent an oil spill.

Both officials confirmed casualties among the crew. By morning, Slyusar уточнив that two crew members had been killed and three others injured. He said the fire, which covered an area of about 20 square meters, was fully extinguished by 5:21 a.m. local time.

Witnesses writing in local Telegram channels reported that the attack on the region appeared to involve jet-powered drones, though this has not been independently confirmed.

OSINT community Exilenova+ reported that the vessel hit was likely the Russian tanker Valeriy Gorchakov. The ship has been linked by open-source analysts to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” and has previously been observed operating in the ports of temporarily occupied Mariupol and Berdyansk.

The vessel was originally built in 1969 as a dry cargo ship and was converted into an oil tanker in 2004. It is designed to transport petroleum products of various types.

Later, Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that three Ukrainian drones had been shot down over the Rostov region during the night of December 18.

Earlier, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, working in coordination with the partisan movement “Chornaya Iskra” (“Black Spark”), carried out a special operation in the Caspian Sea, striking two Russian vessels used to transport weapons and military equipment.

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