By – Rianne Michael
Abstract
Russia has been a major player in the energy section which puts oil refineries in a critical position during the war between Russia and Ukraine. This article examines how Ukraine’s drone strikes during the war on Russian oil refiners has disrupted the fuel production, reduced export revenues and strained the frontlines for the Russian military coupled with intense economic sanction. Ultimately, it demonstrates how these attacks have reshaped modern warfare by transforming energy resources into a strategic vulnerability.
Introduction
Russia is a major player in the global energy market. It continues to be one of the world’s top three crude producers that relies heavily on revenues from oil and natural gas that makes up 45% of its federal budget. Russia has a large crude export pipeline facility that allows it to ship large volumes of crude directly to Europe and Asia. One of which is Druzhba being the longest pipeline network in the world. Since August 2025, there have been increased Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries during the War that has caused widespread damage and increase in the production of Russia leading to a fuel crisis. Russian oil refineries have been struck at least 194 times since the start of the year, and Ukraine has successfully hit Russia’s ten largest refineries. The International Energy Agency has confirmed the strikes are expected to keep suppressing Russian refinery processing rates at least through mid-2026, explicitly tying the campaign’s purpose to cutting the Kremlin’s energy revenue and reducing its ability to supply fuel to its own front lines. This dependency is exactly why Ukraine, unable to match Russia’s manpower or firepower on the battlefield, has increasingly turned to a different kind of front line: Russia’s refineries.
Ukraine’s Drone Campaign: Turning Energy Infrastructure into a Battlefield
Ukraine’s long and intermediate strike campaigns against Russian energy infrastructure is causing significant effects on the Russian economy. Ukrainian forces continuously targeted Russian oil transshipment infrastructure near the Baltic Sea in April 2026 and restricted Russia’s ability to export oil and caused a decline in oil revenues. The Russian authorities imposed a complete ban on gasoline and fuel exports and considered imposing a short-term ban on diesel exports. The Ukraine strikes are decreasing Russia ability to export fuel, depriving Moscow of a chance to benefit from the rise in global oil price. These strikes are also impacting Russia frontline logistics. Russia is experiencing decreased diesel output due to Ukrainian strikes on Russian petrochemical infrastructure, with production falling by one million metric tons in April 2026 and another 600,000 metric tons in May 2026. This has led to Russian military experiencing diesel shortage which has hindered Russia ability to use vehicles to move supplies to the frontline. Such a shortage would exacerbate the supply issues Russian forces are staring to face.
The drone campaign has not operated in isolation, it has compounded a broader economic squeeze already underway from Western sanctions, a strong ruble, and falling global oil prices, creating a multi-front financial crisis for the Kremlin. To date at least 89 federal subjects have experienced fuel shortages due to Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. The shortage has affected 35% of the population, which includes nearly 50 million people. However, the federal response to the crisis has not been as reactive. President Putin has tried to downplay the domestic consequences mentioning that they are not critical and has not taken any further action to resolve the shortage. Therefore, regional governors have been left to address the shortage on their own without any guidance. With limited federal support, independent stations have been forced to raise prices and restrict sales to compensate for deficits. Russia’s largest independent gas station network, was forced to lower prices after a warning from FAS and is now likely operating at a loss.
Fuel Shortages and the Strain on Russia’s Military Front Lines
Behind the scenes, Moscow has had to intervene financially to keep domestic fuel markets from collapsing entirely. Government subsidy payments to refiners who supply the domestic market rather than exporting the so-called “fuel dampener” rose from roughly $220 million in the first quarter of 2026 to more than $2.5 billion in May alone, and recent tax changes now allow compensation for imported gasoline, a sign the government is bracing for the crisis to deepen rather than resolve.
This is the quiet, unglamorous side of political cost: not protests in the street, but a state increasingly forced to spend scarce money just to keep its own domestic fuel supply from visibly breaking down. If Ukraine can sustain and expand this pressure, Putin’s set of political choices will keep narrowing potentially forcing an eventual return to negotiations with fewer ultimatums, an implicit admission that Russia cannot achieve a full military conquest of Ukraine’s eastern and southern territories. Whether that shift actually happens depends on how much economic pain Putin believes his political system can quietly absorb.
India’s Expanding Strategic Leverage Over Russia
Perhaps the clearest evidence of how effective the attacks has been this: Russia, once one of the world’s largest fuel exporters, has been forced to start importing gasoline. Reports indicate Russian buyers sought as much as 400,000 tonnes of gasoline a month from India, Belarus, and Kazakhstan by mid-2026, with tens of thousands of tones of Indian-origin fuel already at sea by July. A country that built its global influence on selling energy to the world is now, in a limited but symbolically important way, dependent on buying it back.
It also creates new diplomatic leverage points that did not previously exist. India, in particular, now finds itself simultaneously the largest buyer of discounted Russian crude and an emergency gasoline supplier propping up Russia’s own domestic market, a dual role that gives New Delhi unusual influence over Moscow’s energy security at precisely the moment Russia can least afford to lose that relationship. A country that once used energy as a tool of leverage over its neighbors is now, in a limited but real sense, dependent on the goodwill of countries it used to treat as junior trading partner
Conclusion
What makes this story significant for international relations is not just the tactical cleverness of drone warfare it’s what it reveals about the changing nature of economic coercion. Western sanctions relied on excluding Russia from global financial and shipping systems, an approach that Russia adapted to over several years through discounted sales, a “shadow fleet” of tankers, and intermediary buyers like India and China. Ukraine’s refinery campaign attacks the problem differently: it does not try to block Russian oil from reaching buyers it tries to stop Russia from having enough refined fuel to sell or use in the first place.
About the Author
Rianne Michael is currently doing her BA LLB at Jindal Global Law School. Her interests lie at the intersection of caste discrimination law and criminal justice particularly how systems respond to caste-motivated violence and how procedural frameworks can either reinforce or dismantle social inequality.
Image Source : https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/10/russia-refinery-damages