Ukraine’s drone war against Russia isn’t new. Its offensive against Russian energy assets isn’t new. But the scale, range, intensity, and impact of what Ukraine has done in just the last few months most certainly are.
Kyiv has used its expanding arsenal of standoff weapons (mostly drones but also some cruise missiles) to bring the war home to Russia in a way that, for the first time since 2022, could actually tilt the scales. Omsk is a good example. That’s Russia’s largest oil refinery, and it is located in Siberia, more than 1,200 miles away from Ukraine. Its destruction last week was traumatic for locals and nearly as seismic inside the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s drone war against Russia isn’t new. Its offensive against Russian energy assets isn’t new. But the scale, range, intensity, and impact of what Ukraine has done in just the last few months most certainly are.
Kyiv has used its expanding arsenal of standoff weapons (mostly drones but also some cruise missiles) to bring the war home to Russia in a way that, for the first time since 2022, could actually tilt the scales. Omsk is a good example. That’s Russia’s largest oil refinery, and it is located in Siberia, more than 1,200 miles away from Ukraine. Its destruction last week was traumatic for locals and nearly as seismic inside the Kremlin.
But Ukraine’s offensive never lets up: In the past few months, it has hit oil refineries, oil depots, oil export ports, and fuel tanks. The carnage that Kyiv’s drone fleet has wreaked on the Russian Black Sea tanker fleet this month is without precedent.
“The picture has changed, and it changed this spring,” said Sergei Aleksashenko, a former deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank who is now at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre. “This operation is a game-changer.”
It changes the game in two different ways for Russia. First, and most visibly, Russians are now having to wait in long gas lines to fill up their tanks. Across the country, Russia’s ability to process crude oil into refined products that consumers use has been demonstrably degraded by Ukraine’s offensive. That goes for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and everything else. The country has started rationing. Russian state media is not taking it well.
Russia has lost basically one-fifth of its refining capacity, from about 5.2 million barrels a day before the war to 3.8 million now, according to a recent study by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES). That marks Russia’s “lowest level in 21 years,” OIES said.
There are two big differences between what has happened this year and what happened previously. One is the reach. The other is that the Ukrainian strikes are directed at things that are harder to repair, such as hydrocrackers that upgrade low-quality heavy gas oils into high-quality refined products such as gasoline and diesel.
“A combination of greater geographical potential, multiple attacks and increasingly accurate targeting of more complex refining units, alongside the attacks on export infrastructure, is putting pressure on both the Russia domestic market and products export sales,” OIES said in its report.
But there is another way that Russia is in a suboptimal position now: It is having trouble exporting products. Refined products bring in more money than crude does, especially if your crude is selling at a global discount, as Russian Urals is.
Russia’s June exports of refined products took a hit. As the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which tracks this traffic very closely, noted last week, “In June, Russia’s seaborne oil product loading volumes hit their lowest level on record.”
Between not making stuff and not selling it, Russia is glum.
“The war reached Russian territory,” Aleksashenko said. “Today, the whole country is affected by this crisis.”
All of this comes at a time of renewed hype about U.S. congressional action against Russia, namely the Sanctioning Russia Act. The legislation, championed by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham—who died suddenly on Saturday—would give the president discretion to levy tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil. U.S. President Donald Trump has long frowned on the bill, but Graham told reporters in Kyiv shortly before his death that lawmakers had come up with a version that the White House had accepted.
The bigger question is whether the stepped-up strikes, and their impact on the Russian economy, will change the Kremlin’s calculus. Four-plus years of sanctions, a weakish ruble, and international opprobrium haven’t.
Ukraine’s threat is not going away. Kyiv can now make as many as 8 million drones a year.
“This is a real crisis,” Aleksashenko said.
