The situation in Primorsk is still uncertain on March 28 following the Ukrainian drone attacks that began on March 23. In Primorsk, tankers have docked at three piers. More ships are waiting outside the port.

No tankers appear to be loading in Ust Luga. Only bulk carriers, possibly intending to carry coal and phosphate. The port appears closed to loading.

Port	Status as of March 27-28, 2026	Capacity
Primorsk	Partially open / Loading is slow	Severely reduced due to damage and fire
Ust-Luga	Closed / Extensive fires	No active loading reported

Primorsk

On Thursday (March 26), it was reported that Primorsk has started loading ships again, but with a greatly reduced capacity . The tanker Anlan has reportedly started loading, and more ships are expected, but damage to the infrastructure means that the process appears slower than normal.

Primorsk has been hit by repeated waves of drone attacks over the past week (March 23, 25 and 27), putting ongoing repairs at risk of being interrupted by new attacks. Satellite images from Friday, March 27 show that parts of the terminal are still on fire. The fire has mainly affected oil depots and fuel tanks, making repair work more difficult.

The attacks have damaged several berths (reports mention Piers 2, 4 and 8, among others) as well as pipelines and railway tracks leading to the port. There are also reports that two tankers were directly damaged in the initial attacks.

Ust Luga

In Ust-Luga, the situation is more serious than in Primorsk on Friday, March 27, 2026. While Primorsk has managed to resume some limited loading, Ust-Luga is described as essentially paralyzed after a series of devastating drone attacks.

• Massive fires: Satellite images (NASA FIRMS and Planet Labs) from Friday afternoon show fires covering an area of ​​about 6 square kilometers . Flames have been reported to reach heights of up to 100 meters.
• Total shutdown: The port is reported to be completely closed to all commercial traffic. No ships are loading due to the ongoing fires and damage to the infrastructure.
• New attacks during the night: On the night between Thursday and Friday (March 26–27), the port was subjected to a third wave of drones, which ignited additional tanks and complicated the rescue work that had begun after the previous attacks on March 25.

Sector	Status / Damage
Berths	At least one oil rig is completely destroyed (burned down) and another is seriously damaged.
Cisterns	Between 30 and 35 oil reservoirs in the northern part of the terminal are on fire or damaged.
Infrastructure	The railway tracks that deliver oil to the port have been damaged along a stretch of 300–500 meters. A pumping station and a power plant have also been hit.
Ship	Reports indicate that three tankers (flagged from Greece, the Marshall Islands, and Sierra Leone) were damaged at berth during the initial attacks.

The situation in Ust-Luga is described by analysts as the “most serious disruption to Russian oil exports in modern history.” It is no longer just a matter of temporary outages, but of structural damage that will take months to repair. Combined with the damage in Primorsk, Russia’s total oil export capacity is estimated to have fallen by nearly 40-50% in the past week.

/ By Ingemar Lindmark