Ukrainian strikes are forcing the Russian oil system to switch to manual control. Imposed inefficiency is a new and highly effective weapon of modern warfare. An analysis of the impact of Ukrainian attacks on the Russian energy sector – Igor Volobuyev for The Moscow Times.
To disable a complex system, it is not necessary to destroy it. It is sufficient to deprive it of its main characteristic – the ability to function predictably, without constant intervention.
For decades, the Russian oil complex was designed as an autopilot mechanism: extraction, processing, export, and tax rents operated along well-established routes. Over the past year, Ukrainian strikes have transformed this system into a device that requires daily manual resolution of emergency situations. A machine that constantly requires manual control inevitably operates more slowly, is more expensive to run, and gradually loses the very quality for which it was created – efficiency.
This is precisely where the logic of current events lies. Ukraine is not destroying the Russian oil system in a single stroke – that is neither possible nor necessary. It is turning it into a chronically expensive, unpredictable, and inefficient system. The goal of modern economic warfare is not to destroy the adversary’s infrastructure, but to deprive it of the ability to function as it was designed.
Impact of Strikes on Processing Economics
Approximately 40% of primary oil refining capacity in Russia has been taken offline – these are unprecedented figures for the entire duration of the war. Strikes have hit at least 24 of the 33 large refineries in European Russia as far as the Urals, and primary processing volumes have fallen to their lowest levels in fifteen years. By early June alone, gasoline production had decreased by approximately a quarter year-on-year, Reuters reports, citing industry sources.
A significant share of the damage to the oil industry and the Russian economy in general is attributed to a new force of resistance against Putin operating directly within Russia – the underground movement Black Spark. This movement has chosen me as its representative. The number of locomotives destroyed or damaged by the underground movement since the beginning of the year alone reaches several dozen. Damages exceed 50 million dollars. Underground fighters also participated in attacks against the largest refineries and gas plants: Ilsky, Yaroslavl, the Kirishinefteorgsintez plant, the Orenburg gas plant, and the helium plant. The restoration of these enterprises will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, it is not the one-time figure that is important, but the nature of the damage. A modern refinery is a network of interconnected nodes: primary distillation units, catalytic cracking units, and rectification columns. It is enough to disable a single critical node – and the entire plant stops. Furthermore, restoration faces a circumstance that turns tactical success into strategic success: a significant portion of Russian refineries was built as part of a global industrial system and depends on specialized Western technologies, components, and service infrastructure, to which access has been very limited since 2022. Sanctions extend repair times and increase their cost: a breakdown that was previously a routine matter now means a shutdown lasting many months.
This is the source of the formula used by some Russian industry analysts: if the stream of drones continues, Ukraine will disable capacity faster than Russia can repair it. This is the essence of this strategy – not destruction, but a negative rate of recovery.
Shortages, Inflation, and Manual Market Control
The consequences are predictable. Retail gasoline prices have risen, and fuel inflation has begun to spill over into other sectors – first into transport and then into agriculture. The government has resorted to measures that were unthinkable for a major exporter of petroleum products until recently: it banned gasoline exports, restricted diesel and jet fuel exports, and permitted the production of lower-quality fuels for the domestic market.
Even more telling than the bans themselves, however, is the transition to manual market control. Moscow and St. Petersburg receive priority supplies, while regions are served according to a residual principle. According to estimates by independent observers, restrictions on fuel sales now apply in 69 of 83 Russian regions; in some areas, sales are limited to ten to twenty liters per person, and in Crimea, retail fuel sales have been completely halted.
Agriculture and the Regional Economy
Diesel shortages hit the regions long before they became a politically sensitive topic in the capital. The Volga region, Western Siberia, Altai, and the Urals – agricultural areas where diesel is as basic a raw material as seeds or fertilizers – found themselves among the most vulnerable. According to industry observers, the spring sowing campaign of 2026 took place under conditions of significant fuel stress: delays in fuel deliveries translate directly into sowing delays, and thus into yields and final food prices.
The mechanism of this transmission is not instantaneous, but it works: the rise in diesel prices in agricultural regions creates additional pressure on food inflation, which is already chronically elevated in a war economy. If current trends continue, their impact will be reflected by the end of the year not only in agricultural production statistics but also in consumer prices.
Air Transport: The Invisible Shortage
The consequences do not only affect road transport. According to available data, jet fuel prices at Russian airports have risen by an average of 17%, and some airlines have been advised by suppliers to reduce consumption by up to a third due to “force majeure” caused by the situation at refineries.
Regional routes, where air transport is often the only alternative, feel the increase in jet fuel prices the most: higher fuel costs either reduce the profitability of carriers or are passed on to passengers. Russia has therefore introduced a temporary ban on jet fuel exports to stabilize the domestic market. This measure alone shows the extent of the pressure: a country that exported jet fuel is forced to restrict its export to supply its own airports.
Kapotnya and the Political Geography of Fuels
The overall logic is best illustrated by the Moscow Refinery in Kapotnya. The Gazprom Neft plant covers approximately 40% of the fuel market in Moscow and 70% of the market in the Moscow region. After two attacks in June, it stopped oil processing and will not be able to resume operations until the end of the year. Repair costs could reach up to one billion dollars.
The symbolism is obvious, but the mechanism itself is more important. Supplying the capital with fuel is not a matter of logistics, but of the legitimacy of state power. Smoke over Kapotnya means that even the country’s best-protected skies are no longer a safe haven and that Moscow’s fuel security – something the state was supposed to guarantee above all – has ceased to be a given.
Ust-Luga, Primorsk, and Export Logistics
Simultaneously, pressure is being applied to export infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. The ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk, through which up to half of Russian petroleum product exports pass, were repeatedly targeted in the spring. Estonian intelligence estimates that the March campaign temporarily halted a route providing 40-50% of petroleum product exports; data released by Kyiv recorded a significant drop in loading in Primorsk and a sharp slump in Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk – a direct hit to foreign exchange earnings.
Attacks on ports rarely destroy an entire storage park, but they disrupt the rhythm of operations. Damage to the railway unloading rack in Ust-Luga necessitated redirecting transport to more distant terminals – this extends the turnaround of railway cars, requires more tankers, and creates additional pressure on the capacity of the railway infrastructure.
The transport of petroleum products thus begins to compete for infrastructure with coal, metals, construction materials, and other export commodities that provide foreign exchange earnings for other sectors of the economy. The energy problem thus acquires a multiplicative character: it displaces other loads from the transport network and creates logistical bottlenecks where they have no connection to the oil industry at all.
A reverse effect also arises: if both export and storage are limited, full storage tanks necessitate restricting processing and, in extreme cases, slowing down extraction as well, because there is nowhere to put the extracted oil. Logistics built for export thus begin to work against themselves.
Sanctions Plus Drones: A New Model of Pressure
The combination of sanctions and attacks creates a new model of pressure. Sanctions act slowly and indirectly – through discounts, shadow fleet problems, and longer logistical routes; drones act quickly and precisely. Together, they create an effect that cannot be achieved by individual tools alone: Russia is forced to shift from exporting high-value-added products – gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel – to exporting crude oil. Paradoxically, the tax system makes exporting raw materials more profitable for companies, so direct budgetary losses from processing restrictions are smaller than expected. However, the country is losing its processing industry – that is, what distinguishes an industrial economy from an economy based on the export of raw materials.
The budget is under pressure despite relatively high global oil prices. The short-term increase caused by the war against Iran raised prices significantly above usual levels, but the effect quickly faded. According to available estimates, oil and gas revenues for the first half of the year decreased significantly, and the budget deficit exceeded the full-year plan.
The most telling evidence has been the necessity of imports. One of the world’s largest exporters of petroleum products is forced to negotiate the purchase of gasoline from neighboring states: supplies from Belarus are growing, negotiations are underway with Kazakhstan for the purchase of approximately 50,000 tons of AI-92 gasoline, and maritime fuel imports from Asia are being prepared.
The internal contradiction of the situation is also characteristic: Kazakhstan, whose refining industry is partially dependent on Russian raw materials – one of the plants there processes condensate from a Russian refinery that was shut down after an attack – is itself having difficulty meeting Moscow’s request to the required extent.
Russia has become both the source of the problem and its victim. This image says more than any statistic.
What This Says About the War and Prospects
The classic model of economic warfare worked with quantity: stop exports, destroy extraction, zero out revenues. This logic assumed a single decisive blow or systematic pressure on paper – an embargo, a sanctions list, or a price cap.
The new model forming before our eyes works with reliability. Its goal is not to deprive the adversary of a resource, but to strip them of the ability to manage it predictably. Damaged infrastructure can be restored; it is much more difficult to restore the certainty that it will function tomorrow.
The Ukrainian campaign against Russian oil infrastructure is not merely an episode of the current war. It is becoming one of the first significant examples of what economic competition will look like in a world where the strategic goal is not the destruction of the adversary’s resources, but the undermining of their ability to use them predictably and efficiently.
Modern warfare increasingly achieves its goals not by destroying infrastructure, but through imposed inefficiency that strips complex economic systems of their ability to function as they were designed.
Translation without additions or edits; the text does not reflect the position of the editorial office.
