Smoke from Russia's Ust-Luga port fire visible from Narva
Smoke from a fire at Russia's Ust-Luga port, hit in Ukrainian airstrikes this week, was visible in the distance from the Northeastern Estonian border city of Narva Saturday.
ERR correspondent Sergei Stepanov said evidence of the Ust-Luga port fire could be seen from a high-rise rooftop in Central Narva on Saturday morning.
"You can see a massive column of smoke drifting southeast," he said.
While the plume was clearly visible from several vantage points in town, Stepanov said there was no noticeable smell, since the smoke itself was not carrying into Narva.
Ust-Luga lies about 25 kilometers northeast of Narva.
Recent drone incidents tied to Ust-Luga attacks
This week, Ukraine targeted Russia's Ust-Luga and Primorsk oil ports on the Gulf of Finland and the Kirishi refinery southeast of St. Petersburg, where large fires reportedly halted operations.
In the early hours of Wednesday, several unidentified drones passed through Northeastern Estonian airspace, mostly over the Gulf of Finland.
Just before 4 a.m., one drone entered over the Narva River and struck a smokestack at Auvere Power Plant minutes later, leaving no time to issue an alert via the EE-ALARM emergency warning system.
An emergency alert was issued later that morning after the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF) determined an unidentified aircraft may be entering Estonian airspace in the northeast, with a subsequent update specifying the alert applied to Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru counties.
The drones were later identified as Ukrainian, possibly diverted into Estonian airspace en route to Ust-Luga by Russian countermeasures. Similar Ukrainian drone incursions occurred near Latvia and Lithuania's eastern borders this week.
EDF leaders called such incidents an inevitable side effect of Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine.
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Editor: Mait Ots, Aili Vahtla
