Ukraine, stuck on the battlefield, targets Russia’s oil industry
With the army running out of ammunition and troops to break the battlefield deadlock, Ukraine has increasingly taken the fight behind Russian lines, attacking warships, railways and airfields in an effort to limit Moscow’s military operations.
Most recently, that campaign has focused on oil infrastructure, hitting refineries deep within Russian territory and highlighting the country’s vulnerability to such attacks.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Ukrainian drones struck four Russian refineries, officials from both sides said, adding to a series of recent attacks that have set fire to depots, fuel tanks and other oil infrastructure across Russia. Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has claimed responsibility for nearly a dozen such attacks, and local Russian authorities have reported five more.
Experts and Ukrainian officials say Ukraine hopes to disrupt the Russian military’s logistics routes and combat operations by targeting refineries, which supply gasoline, diesel and fuel for tanks, fighter jets and other critical military equipment.
In addition, they hope to steal the profits Moscow makes from exporting oil products and cause disruptions in Russia’s domestic oil market.
Mikhail Krutikhin, an independent Russian energy analyst living in exile in Oslo, said the strikes had prompted Moscow introduce a six-month ban on gasoline exports, starting March 1to ensure domestic demand is met while repairs are made to damaged refineries.
British Military Intelligence said last week“It is likely that Russia’s refining capacity has been temporarily reduced” by multiple Ukrainian attacks on refineries.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia told the newspaper on Wednesday The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the purpose of the attacks, in combination with armed incursions by Ukrainian-backed Russian groups on Russian territory this week, was “if it would not disrupt the presidential elections in Russia, then it would at least interfere in some way with the normal process of expressing the will of citizens.”
Mr Putin, who will undoubtedly win a fifth term in elections this weekend, added that another aim was to gain a kind of “trump card in a possible future negotiation process.”
The appeal of Ukraine’s recent drone targets is obvious.
Oil plants are vast and difficult to protect, and there are so many in Russia that Moscow cannot realistically provide them all with air defense, said Mr. Krutikhin and Damien Ernst, an energy expert and professor at the University of Liege in Belgium. . Many of the affected factories are in the west, closer to Ukraine.
Refineries in particular have been a major focus because they convert crude oil into valuable products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene and jet fuel.
Mr. Ernst and Mr. Krutikhin noted that unlike other oil infrastructure such as pipelines, refineries involve a lot of complex machinery and advanced engineering, and can take several months to repair. Some say analysts repairs may take longer than usual because sanctions ban Western sales of certain parts to Russia.
After this week’s attacks, the Russian authorities said operations had been temporarily halted at two of the refineries affected near Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, and in the southern region of Rostov. Fires also broke out at two other Russian refineries that were affected local authorities.
But such disruptions do not mean that Ukraine can actually undermine Russia’s energy giant, which is at the heart of its economy and war effort.
It remains unclear what consequences this may have, the attacks will impact the fighting. Russia still has the advantage on the battlefield and has been applying pressure along the front line in recent weeks.
Sergey Vakulenko, an energy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a research group, said Russia was producing far more diesel than needed to supply its troops. “It will take quite some time before Ukraine manages to achieve enough refining units to have an impact on Russian diesel capacity,” he said.
Mr Vakulenko, a former top executive at Gazprom Neft, one of Russia’s larger oil producers, added that the impact of this year’s attacks on Russia’s refined oil exports had been “fairly minimal”.
There have been attempts to undermine Russia’s oil industry before.
After Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries introduced sweeping sanctions against Russian sales of hydrocarbons – including oil, gas and coal. And most of Europe has managed to turn away from Russian gas.
But Russia has softened the blow by expanding sales to friendly countries, especially China and India, and even investing in a “shadow fleet” to clandestinely export its oil.
Since the start of the war, Russia has raised approximately $450 billion from exports of crude oil and refined oil products. Center for Energy and Clean Air Research, an independent research organization based in Finland. Military experts say these revenues have helped Moscow expand its defense industry and buy missiles and drones from Iran and North Korea.
On Thursday, Pavel Sorokin, Russia’s First Deputy Energy Minister, suggested that Russia is once again taking on a new challenge. He acknowledged that he expected refinery output to decline this year. This was reported by the Russian state news agency Tass. But he indicated that the country has options and would instead increase crude oil exports.
“The situation is stable,” he said, according to Tass. “There is nothing crucial because it means oil exports will be higher.”
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn And Maria Varenikova reporting contributed.