Hitting Russia's Oil Refineries Deep Within

[The Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery [Orsk in Orenburg region] was hit."

"A strike was recorded, followed by a fire on the territory of the enterprise."

"The facility is involved in supplying the Russian occupation army."

Ukraine Military General Staff

 

"The enemy must understand a simple fact: it no longer has a 'safe rear'."

"Distance no longer guarantees protection -- every region where enterprises support the war against Ukraine is within reach'."

Security Service of Ukraine 

 

"We have to minimize [Russia’s] physical ability to send oil to the vessels and transport it outside of their ports."

"Our main target here is to limit Russia's ability to finance war."

"Prices rose without our participation. It was because of the Iran war initiated by the U.S."

"But for Ukraine it has created additional problems because [Moscow] is getting money for the same volume of oil it exports."

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director, Kyiv-based Energy Industry Research Center  

Ukrainian drone strikes hit oil infrastructure across Russia this week, sparking huge fires. (Reuters: Governor of Krasnodar Region Veniamin Kondratyev)

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared the success of his military's latest long-range drone attack at an oil facility deep within Russia, causing a huge fire on Wednesday. The oil facility is located in the Ural Mountains, the Perm region of Russia, over 1,500 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. There, a Russian oil pumping station was struck, reflecting Ukraine's military strategy of targeting Russia's energy infrastructure.  

 

Perm Governor Dmitry Makhonin, while admitting a drone had hit, declined to mention details, leaving it as an unspecified industrial facility. The fire that resulted was massive. Yet another Ukrainian success in its counteroffensive to the Russian military's unceasing night time attacks on Ukrainian cities and the country's energy infrastructure. An increasing number of long-range attacks with increasingly accurate, domestically developed drones has infuriated Vladimir Putin, who spits rage at Ukraine's 'terrorism'.

 

Russia's larger army continues to press slowly forward passing four years of an invasion that isn't really war, according to Vladimir Putin, but a 'special military operation' where he has ordered his military to flatten Ukrainian towns and villages, dislocating millions of Ukrainians as he forges on with his brutal mission to occupy more than the 20 percent of Ukraine's geography it currently holds, to add to Greater Russia. 

 

A Panamanian-flagged vessel carrying Russian crude oil is moored of the coast of the Philippines on April 1. The country purchased its first shipment of Russian oil in five years because of the global supply crunch (Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

 

Ukraine, for its part, continues to have an advantage in refining drone technology, both for attack and for defence purposes. The video that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted showed an immense plume of dark smoke rising into the atmosphere close to an urbanized area. Ukraine, its president explained, was expanding the range of its long-distance strikes. He announced a new phase in efforts to limit Russia's capacity to wage war, by impacting its revenue stream through oil extraction and shipment to willing buyers. 

 

"The straight-line distance is more than 1,500 kilometres. We will continue to increase these  ranges", he promised. 

 

Only the previous day, Ukraine had struck the Tuapse oil refinery and terminal on the Black Sea for the third time in less than two weeks. The attack led to the evacuation of the local population from the area, while creating what President Putin stated could be "serious environmental consequences". Mr. Putin's blinkered vision fails to recognize his own orders to the Russian military create similar conditions in Ukraine.  

 

A satellite image shows smoke rising following a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil pumping station amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Bashkultaevo, Perm Region. (Reuters: Planet Labs BBC)

 

The plan of escalating Ukraine's long-distance strike campaign against Russian oil facilities to put a grinding stop to Moscow's reaping a financial windfall from a U.S. waiver on sanctions in the midst of a global supply shortage caused by the Iran war, appears to be going the way of Ukraine's advantage.  

"Kyiv is exploiting the vulnerabilities of Russia's large land mass."

"Ukrainian forces will likely continue to exploit the large attack surface of Russia's deep rear and overstretched Russian air defences to launch more frequent and larger strikes against Russian oil infrastructure and military assets."

Institute for the Study of War, Washington