Silicon Curtain

Silicon Bites Ep320 | 2026-04-18 | Ukraine’s war on Russian oil, the allies who begged them to stop, and the sanctions waiver that proved whose side Washington is on. On the morning of April 16th, a plume of black smoke rose from the Russian port city of Tuapse on the Black Sea coast. It stretched over a hundred kilometres out to sea. It was visible from space. NASA published the satellite image.

The Tuapse Oil Refinery — a Rosneft facility, one of the ten largest in Russia, with an annual processing capacity of twelve million tons — was on fire. Ukrainian drones from the Security Service’s Alpha special operations centre had struck fuel storage tanks, deepwater oil-loading arms, pipeline infrastructure, and a multifunctional radar station. The fire spread to neighbouring reservoirs and burned through the day. Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed the strike. The OSINT project CyberBoroshno reported the fire had intensified. OSINTtechnical posted the satellite footage. The port of Tuapse handles up to ten percent of Russia’s total petroleum product exports.
———-