When cleanup volunteer Sergei Solovev arrived in the town of Tuapse, on Russia’s Black Sea coast, an unpleasant odour hung in the air and everything was coated in a layer of black grime.“I saw train carriages covered in residue from the black rain and animals. It’s all very toxic,” he told Al Jazeera. “And the smell was oily.”Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBlack rain is an unnatural weather phenomenon, where water droplets blackened by soot and ash fall from the sky. It was seen in Hiroshima, Japan, after the atomic bomb explosion in 1945, more recently in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and in 1991 in Kuwait, when oilfields were set ablaze during the Gulf War.And now, it is falling on parts of Russia.Over the past couple of weeks, Tuapse has been hit by a series of three Ukrainian drone strikes targeting its refinery, one of the largest in Russia. The attacks, aimed at hurting Russia’s oil industry, have caused an ecological disaster in a war that has devastated the environment.The first strike came on April 16, causing a fire that lasted two days. Four days later, on April 20, the refinery was struck again, leaving a massive plume of thick smoke billowing into the sky. This time, the fire lasted for five days. Smoke from the fire released poisonous chemicals, and a subsequent analysis of the air around the town found that concentrations of benzene, xylene, and soot were three times abov …
