The Hill: Ukraine Strikes At Russian Oil

The causes and consequences of the attacks.

Ukraine is ramping up attacks on Russian oil refineries in a campaign that has damaged Moscow’s most important source of revenue. Ukraine’s forces have struck oil refineries deep inside Russia at least 12 times during the war, disrupting at least 10% of Russian refining capacity.

The Hill writes that in March alone, Ukraine carried out five successful reported strikes on several oil refineries. These attacks show that Ukraine continues to use relatively cheap technology to carry out strikes that harm Russia.

Will the strikes on Russian refineries change the situation at the front?

experts say the oil refinery attacks would need to ramp up to change the calculus on the battlefield, where Russia has seized the upper hand in recent months, thanks in part to Republicans in U.S. Congress refusing to pass new aid for Ukraine.

John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said if Ukraine is “able to scale this up in a big way, it could be a way to gain leverage over Russia.”

“To the extent it affects the war, it would probably be more in finances,” he said. “For every dollar that Moscow doesn’t generate through taxes on industry, that’s a dollar that it can’t put into soldiers or producing weapons.”

Earlier, Ukraine attacked Russia 800 miles deep and caused only moderate damage to Russian refineries, which allowed Moscow to repair the affected facilities. Now in Russia, the Ukrainian strikes have forced Russia to do “major repairs,” which “could take considerable time and expense.”

“Sanctions are highly likely increasing the time and cost of sourcing replacement equipment,” British intelligence officials wrote. “These strikes are imposing a financial cost on Russia, impacting the domestic fuel market.”

Ukrainian strikes on refineries forced the Kremlin to impose a six-month ban on gasoline exports to try to meet domestic demand, and gasoline prices in the country rose.

Giorgi Revishvili, a Fulbright scholar at Texas A&M University Bush School of Government and Public Service, said rising fuel prices could cause domestic problems for Putin.

“The impact of higher fuel prices would be felt throughout Russia, particularly in regions with struggling economies, potentially creating instability” Revishvili wrote in an analysis for the Atlantic Council.

However, Alexandra Prokopenko, a researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies, said the strikes on oil refineries “are unpleasant but not too painful for the Russian war machine.”

“They do not affect the fuel supply to the front and may only briefly increase gasoline prices on the domestic market in Russia,” Prokopenko said in an email, saying the attacks have also forced Russian oil companies to invest in antidrone systems.

What will be the consequences of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries?

Ukraine also sees these attacks as strategic, because Russia has largely evaded Western sanctions on its oil exports.

Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Center for Transatlantic Dialogue, a Ukrainian think tank, said the strikes on refineries are “extremely effective” and are expected to reduce Russian oil production in April.

He added that these attacks are “just the beginning” and expects them to intensify.

“It's not just a fly in the room that bothers you,” he said. “We see prices rising in Russia.”

Skripchenko also said that Ukraine is exhausting Russian air defences and striking hard-to-recover areas of refineries that will be harder and harder to repair.

“If we continue doing this … at a specific point of time they run out of spare parts,” he said. ”In the end it will lead to Russia trying to get some spare parts from abroad it will take months for that to repair. It’s a viable strategy that works.”

Ukraine conducts relatively cheap attacks. In most cases, Kyiv attacks refineries with long-range drones. These drones are not particularly sophisticated, but they regularly penetrate Russian air defence systems and radars.