The Ukrainian Armed Forces attack the Novoshakhtinsky oil products plant in the Rostov region most often. This year — three times already. The company is the largest supplier of fuel in the south of Russia, but the scale of losses that Newsweek estimated the strikes amazed even experts.
On December 18, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched the third drone strike on the Novoshakhtinsky oil products plant this year. Reuters reported, citing sources, that one of two primary oil refining units and one fuel tank were damaged.
The American edition of Newsweek, in turn, assessed the scale of losses incurred by the plant on the example of the attack in June. Experts were surprised by the scope of the imagination of American journalists.
"Newsweek said that at this plant with a capacity of 7.5 million tons per year, one and a half million tons of raw materials and products worth $ 540 million were destroyed during the June drone attack. I went to check it out," writes Sergey Vakulenko, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Berlin Center.
He noted that the tank farm of the Novoshakhtinsky plant does not exceed 200 thousand cubic meters (152 thousand tons). According to the company itself, there are 211 thousand cubic meters in 47 tanks.
APU, as reported, hit one tank, but that was quickly extinguished, writes Sergey Vakulenko.
"But let's even assume that all the tanks have burned out, all 200 thousand m3. Where do one and a half million tons come from?", asked a senior researcher at the Carnegie Berlin Center.
"For those who are familiar with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to shove one and a half million tons of oil and petroleum products into 200 thousand cubic meters of tanks," Sergey Vakulenko continued with irony. — Russian oil and its products must be harsh. Nails would be made from these oils — in terms of density, it turns out, exactly like iron — 7.5 kg / liter. And the powerful plant manages to store more than two months' supply of products and raw materials."
According to an expert at the Berlin center, Newsweek overestimated the damage by at least 400 times.
"To understand this, you didn't have to be a special specialist, but just need to check a rather impressive figure for common sense. We need to be more careful, Comrade Newsweek," added Sergey Vakulenko.
P.S. The American edition uses a similar figure of damage from the June attack on the Novoshakhtinsky refinery in other publications, but refers to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in them.