Ukraine’s war against Russia is not new. His offensive against Russia’s energy resources is nothing new. But the scale, range, scale, and impact of what Ukraine has done in the past few months is undeniable.
Kyiv has deployed its expanding array of anti-missile weapons (mainly drones but also cruises. missiles) to bring the war home to Russia in a way that, for the first time since 2022, could actually tip the balance. Omsk is beautiful example. It is the largest oil refinery in Russia, and it is located in Siberia, more than 1,200 miles from Ukraine. His loss last week was traumatic to the locals and almost as seismic inside the Kremlin.
Ukraine’s war against Russia is not new. His offensive against Russia’s energy resources is nothing new. But the scale, range, scale, and impact of what Ukraine has done in the past few months is undeniable.
Kyiv has used its expanding array of anti-missile weapons (mainly drones but also cruises. missiles) to bring the war home to Russia in a way that, for the first time since 2022, could actually tip the balance. Omsk is beautiful example. It is the largest oil refinery in Russia, and it is located in Siberia, more than 1,200 miles from Ukraine. His loss last week was traumatic to the locals and almost as seismic inside the Kremlin.
But Ukraine offensive never gives up: In the past few months, it has hit oil refineries, oil warehousesoil export ports, and fuel tanks. The murder that Kyiv’s drone fleet has crashed into the Russian Black Sea a tank ship this month has no precedent.
“The picture has changed, and it changed this spring,” said Sergei Aleksashenko, a former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia who is now at the Center for New Eurasian Strategies. “This operation is a game changer.”
It changes the game in two different ways for Russia. First, and most visible, the Russians are now having to wait in long gas lines to fill their tanks. Across the country, Russia’s ability to process crude oil into refined products that consumers use has been undermined by Ukraine’s attacks. That goes for gasoline, dieseljet fuel, and everything else. The country has begun allocation. Russian state media is not take it well.
Russia has lost essentially one-fifth of its refining capacity, from about 5.2 million barrels a day before the war to 3.8 million now, according to recent research and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES). That marks Russia’s “lowest rate in 21 years,” OIES said.
There are two big differences between what happened this year and what happened before. One is reach. Another is that Ukraine’s strikes are targeting things that are difficult to repair, such as hydrocrackers that upgrade low-quality gas fuels into high-quality refined products like gasoline and diesel.
“The combination of greater geographic capacity, more attacks and more precise targeting of more refining units, as well as attacks on export infrastructure, is putting pressure on Russia’s domestic market and exports,” OIES said in its report.
But there’s another way Russia is at a disadvantage now: It’s struggling to export goods. Refined products bring in more money than crude, especially if your crude sells for a international discountlike the Russian Urals.
Russia’s June exports of refined products picked up. As the Center for Energy and Clean Air Research, which closely monitors this traffic, he noted last week,”In June, the loading rate of marine oil products in Russia reached the lowest level on record.
Between not making things and not selling, Russia is weak.
“The war reached Russian territory,” Aleksashenko said. “Today, the whole country is affected by this problem.”
All this is happening at a time of new excitement about the action of the US Congress against Russia, ie Ratifying Russian Law. The legislation, sponsored by US Senator Lindsey Graham – who died suddenly on Saturday – would give the president discretion to impose tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil. US President Donald Trump has a long term who frowned on the bill, but Graham he told it journalists in Kyiv shortly before his death that lawmakers had come up with a version that the White House accepted.
The bigger question is whether the intensified strikes, and their impact on the Russian economy, will change the Kremlin’s calculus. Four more years of sanctions, a weak ruble, and lack of internationalization have not caught up.
The threat to Ukraine is not far away. Kyiv can now do many like 8 million drones per year.
“This is a real problem,” Aleksashenko said.
