A Ukrainian drone struck the refinery in Tuapse on April 20. Four days later, the fire is still not extinguished. Smoke has been rising for the third consecutive day. The residents of the city - 61,500 people on the Black Sea coast, 75 kilometers from Sochi - are living in an environmental catastrophe.

"This is a genuine environmental disaster. What should I do? I don't want to be here anymore. I must leave today," one resident said while trying to clean the black residue covering the city. Another resident declared that her confidence in Russian leadership had "completely collapsed."

"New Hiroshima" - without the radiation

Pro-Russian media are comparing the situation to historical nuclear catastrophes. "What is happening in Tuapse is like Hiroshima, just without radiation," reads one Telegram channel. Pavel Kukhmirov claims the city "no longer exists" - contaminated earth, water, and air.

Local authorities waited three days before announcing that air quality was seriously compromised. The Emergency Response Center confirmed that combustion byproducts entered the atmosphere and fell with rain on April 22. Benzene, xylene, and soot concentrations are two to three times above normal in several neighborhoods.

The Tuapse refinery, operated by Rosneft, is among Russia's ten largest, processing approximately 12 million tons of crude oil annually. When facilities like these burn, the consequences do not stay local. The smoke spreads, oil prices rise, and the people who live next to the refinery are the last to learn that the air is poisoned.