Tag: Drones

Late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, Ukrainian drones struck the Nizhny Novgorod oil refinery in Kstovo, in central Russia 520 miles from the front line in northern Ukraine. The blasts triggered what the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv described as a “powerful” fire that burned through the early morning.

“The results and extent of the damage are being clarified,” the general staff reported. But Russian bloggers are already panicking over this and other recent Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s roughly 30 large refineries, critical chokepoints in the country’s most important industry. “Yet another refinery in flames,” one blogger wrote after decrying the apparent absence of air defenses around the strategic sites.

Ukraine’s campaign of deep strikes targeting Russian oil facilities has been going on for around two years, but this month’s raids marked a significant escalation. The Kstovo plant alone refined 13,000,000 million barrels of oil a year, roughly 5% of Russia’s total refinery output. Strikes on several other refineries this month may have depressed Russian petroleum product production by more than a tenth.

Refineries can be repaired. But Ukraine can always send more drones. In three years of relentless work, Ukrainian industry has developed more than a dozen different models of long-range strike drone, including modified sport planes that routinely haul hundreds of pounds of explosives as far as 800 miles and strike with pinpoint accuracy. Other drone models can travel more than 1,000 miles.

Compared to the presumably multimillion-dollar cost of rebuilding a refinery, a drone—even a swarm of drones—is cheap. The Aeroprakt A-22 sport planes the Ukrainians transform into attack drones sell for around $130,000.

The oil raids are part of a wider Ukrainian strategy aimed at depriving Russia of its main source of state revenue—and strangling the Russian war effort by choking off its funding.

The Americans are in on it—for now. Fresh U.S. sanctions on tankers hauling Russian oil, put into place by the administration of former Pres. Joe Biden in its last two weeks in power, have begun to scare off Chinese and Indian buyers.

Whether Pres. Donald Trump sustains the sanctions, lifts them or double downs, remains to be seen. Trump’s first days in office have been unusually chaotic—and haven’t projected a clear vision for America’s new role in the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump once pledged to end the war on his first day in office on Jan. 20, a promise he obviously failed to keep.

It’s worth noting that Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has long argued for stricter sanctions on what he characterized as Russia’s “weaponized” energy industry. There’s no guarantee Kellogg’s prescription becomes policy, however.

The Ukrainians are determined to continue blowing up Russian oil, regardless of whether the Americans continue to assist with the wider counter-energy campaign. “Combat work on strategic facilities involved in providing support for the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine will continue,” the Ukrainian general staff stated.

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