"Stale Soviet GOSTs" protected old oil depots better than air defense systems, says expert from a Western Foundation.

Russian oil depots built during the Soviet era can withstand Ukrainian drone strikes better than newer ones.

Sergei Vakulenko, an expert at the Carnegie Berlin Center (an organization considered undesirable in the Russian Federation), stated this in an interview with the foreign agent publication Meduza, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

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"Speaking of the bases, the results of the attacks on Primorsk and Grushevaya show that the bases were built quite well. Looking at the photos of how it burned, it seems like there shouldn't be anything alive left for many kilometers.

"And some time later, subsequent satellite images show that the drums that were specifically hit burned up. But the neighboring ones remained mostly undamaged and appear to be functioning. "That is, the strict, rigid Soviet GOST and SNIP standards by which everything was built played a role," Vakulenko said.

According to him, new Russian oil depots ignore Rostekhnadzor requirements.

"It's amazing, by the way, that military bases and State Reserve bases, which don't need permission from Rostekhnadzor and can send Rostekhnadzor to a well-known address, burned much more intensely.

"They burned for weeks, and almost everything inside them was consumed. Looking at the satellite image, you see that everything there was much denser than at civilian oil depots," Vakulenko said.