Several Ukrainian drones flew over Russia’s largest refinery on Monday and then, one after the other, hit its crude distillation unit, engulfing the refinery in a ball of fire and clouds of smoke. There was no air defense to speak of because Russian officials assumed the refinery in the Siberian city of Omsk was too far from Ukraine to be endangered.
The hit, which on Wednesday banned diesel exports and accelerated Russia’s month-long recession fuel crisisMarked a major expansion in the range of Ukraine’s deep strikes. Until now, they had been confined to European Russia, within about 1,000 miles of Kiev-controlled territory. But Omsk is about 1,500 miles away in a straight line, and drones flying there had to take a longer, more circuitous route to avoid air defenses.
Ukrainian drone According to the manufacturer, Fire Point, the guns used in this operation have a maximum range of 2,100 miles. This means that a vast additional portion of Russia, including the core of its oil-and-gas industry in Western Siberia and hundreds of key military installations, will also need to be protected from Ukrainian air attacks—at a time when Russia’s air defenses are already stretched thin by Kiev’s relentless drone and missile campaign.
“We are leveling the playing field. In 2026, we can finally, intensively, do to us what Russia has been doing to us since 2022,” said Mykola Belyaskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a state think tank in Ukraine, and a senior analyst at the Come Back Alive Foundation, which supports and equips the Ukrainian military. “Russia is much bigger than us, and that means the attacker has the advantage because they never know what attack will come next, and it will be very difficult to defend. Of course, the geography here works in our favor.”
All major refineries in the European part of Russia have been affected this year, with varying degrees of damage. Gasoline production is estimated to have fallen by at least a quarter, causing long lines, shortages and rationing across the country. Neighboring Kazakhstan deployed 59 checkpoints on its border with Russia on Thursday to stop Russian motorists from smuggling fuel.
Russia’s diesel production exceeded consumption by a third, making the country one of the world’s leading exporters. But diesel shortages are also looming, which is why Moscow announced an export ban on Wednesday, sending shockwaves through global markets.
“In a way, hitting Omsk may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said James Henderson, distinguished research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “This is certainly important, and the further the Ukrainians advance, the more serious it will become for the Russian energy system.”
President Vladimir Putin described the Ukrainian attacks as mostly a psychological operation in an emergency meeting with his ministers and several governors on Wednesday. He said, “It is clear that the enemy is trying to damage the economy, but his main goal is to create an atmosphere of tension in the society. We all understand that this is an impossible task.” “The resilience of the Russian energy system is very high, one of the highest in the world.”
Indeed, despite the Ukrainian attacks, Russia should not see the current chaos at the gas pump, said Russian opposition politician Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who at the time ran Yukos, one of Russia’s largest oil companies, before a confrontation with Putin ended in imprisonment in 2003 and exile a decade later: “The loss of capacity is significant, but it is still not significant.”
Russian oil companies and the state are sitting on significant fuel reserves that could be used to cushion the blow, he said, and it doesn’t take much to activate so-called teapot refineries that produce low-grade gasoline that would help ease the shortage.
“The losses incurred so far are the result of a management crisis, not a gasoline crisis,” Khodorkovsky said. “It has demonstrated to Russian society that Putin’s system of governance does not work, and this is very unpleasant for Putin politically.”
Parts of refineries that have been hit by Ukrainian drones can usually be repaired within weeks or months, and sometimes days. To truly impact the Russian energy industry, Ukraine must be able to supplement drones with more powerful missiles. “If 500 kilograms of weapons start attacking the refineries, the situation will change fundamentally,” Khodorkovsky said.
So far, Ukraine has succeeded only a few successful attacks by its Flamingo cruise missiles, which are aimed at more hardened Russian targets, such as facilities that make components for Russia’s own ballistic missile program. The longer the range of Ukrainian drones, the smaller their warheads must be to account for the additional fuel.
Kiev’s expanding campaign to conduct “deep strikes” on targets throughout Russia has been paired with a parallel “middle-strike” campaign focused on occupied southern Ukraine and Crimea at a range of 50 to 150 miles. Guided drones patrol main highways there, attacking fuel tankers and military logistics as well as fuel storage facilities and electricity infrastructure. In recent days, Ukraine has managed to target dozens of small tankers attempting to ferry fuel to Crimea in the Azov and Black Seas, while much of Crimea – where fuel is virtually unavailable – was plunged into a one-day blackout.
“Russia has now lost both its operational and strategic depth,” said Edward Stringer, a retired Royal Air Force air marshal who ran operations for the British Ministry of Defence. “Russia only has a certain number of air-defense assets, and they can’t all be on the front line. The more territory Russia now has to defend, which is essentially all the way to Vladivostok, the more porous the front line will become – meaning it will be even easier for Ukraine to send armaments into and out of Russia’s rear.”
New targets within Ukraine’s reach include Russia’s main liquefied natural gas terminal on the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic, the country’s major oil and gas production facilities, pipeline nodes and pumping stations in Western Siberia, as well as some of the most sensitive parts of Russia’s military industry. Ukraine currently launches several hundred long-range and medium-range drones daily.
Amid the new abundance of targets, gasoline refineries remain Russia’s weakness, economists say. Due to the legacy of the Soviet system, which considered private ownership of vehicles a luxury, the production of gasoline, unlike diesel, was never so developed. However, this month Russia was forced to begin importing gasoline for the first time in decades.
“This is something new and something very complicated because gasoline can no longer be imported from nearby Europe. This is a game changer,” said Vladimir Milov, an exiled opposition politician who served as Russia’s deputy energy minister early in the Putin administration.
Because Russia’s economy is accustomed to cheap fuel, subsidies – including those needed to keep farmers and airlines in business – could easily reach several billion dollars per month as income from exports of petroleum products evaporates, Milov said: “The fuel situation is putting a strong strain on the budget, increasing the deficit, and this could force them to consider ending the war.”
The strategic goal of Ukraine’s air campaign is actually to force Putin – who demands the Ukrainian surrender of the Donetsk region and possibly other areas of Ukraine as a precondition – to agree to a ceasefire on the current border lines. After meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO summit in Türkiye on Wednesday, President Trump said, Supported long-range attacks of Kyiv On Russia. “It is an increase, but it is also an increase that can help lead to the end,” he said.
So far, there are no signs that this approach works. Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptors has encouraged Putin to respond with Ukrainian attacks on refineries. Is firing ballistic missiles again and again In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, there were dozens of civilian casualties.
The Russian leader’s decision to pursue the war effort despite all the new challenges fits with his character: “The traditional model of Putin’s behavior is to make decisions at the last possible moment, when the situation is already bad,” Khodorkovsky said. And, so far, it’s not completely bullshit yet.
Nevertheless, if Ukrainian attacks continue and the Russian fuel crisis deepens, systemic effects will emerge. “Fuel shortages will also lead to shortages for the military, disruption to shipping of consumer goods including food, and we are seeing farmers already facing fuel problems,” said Mikhail Krutikhin, a Norway-based Russian energy expert.
Ukrainian and Western officials hope that at some point—perhaps even this year—such increasing pressure could force Putin to end the war.
“If you consider strategic game theory, what Putin is doing is pretending that he is crazy, and that he will not stop. Nevertheless, at some point he will stop, because he is a rational player,” said Timofey Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and former Ukrainian minister of economic development and trade. “But for that to happen, Russia will have to feel five to 10 times more pain than it does now.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov yaroslov.trofimov@wsj.com
