Russia is turning to increasingly improvised defences to protect its ships from Ukraine’s expanding drone campaign, with oil tankers now resembling something straight out of a dystopian movie.
Airbus satellite images show large netted frames around the base. Booms and barges have also been positioned across the entrance to the military harbour to make seaborne access more difficult. That particular defensive measure has been in place since March 2024.
Isik said another sanctioned tanker, the Rizvel, was also sailing south of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara under a layer of netting. “Mad Max movies have nothing that can top this,” he said. Samir Madani, co-founder of shipping monitoring website Tankertrackers.com, described the situation and said that the crew had “boxed themselves in”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that Kyiv had carried out what he called a “unique operation” against the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk. He said the strikes hit Russian ships, air-defence positions, piers and other parts of the port infrastructure.
