The publication notes that Ukraine tried to attack this aggressor's weak point as early as late 2023, but at that time the administration of US President Joe Biden, fearing a rise in global oil prices, effectively vetoed this Kiev strategy.

In the summer of 2025, Ukraine launched a new campaign of attacks on Russian oil refineries and pipelines. This time, with Washington no longer so vocal in its opposition to such attacks, the campaign yielded notable results:

According to various sources, Russia lost between 17% and 20% of its oil refining.

This led to significant fuel shortages and a rise in fuel prices in Russia's domestic market, increasing social pressure on the Kremlin as ordinary Russians increasingly feel the effects of the war.

“Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries are achieving what sanctions alone could not achieve. Moscow has found ways to adapt to Western sanctions, but so far it has no reliable defense against Ukrainian drones,” explains Sergey Kuzan, a former adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

As Forbes points out, Russian propaganda cannot ignore the queues at gas stations in many regions of Russia, but tries to explain them away with a seasonal increase in demand for fuel and unscheduled repairs at oil refineries. Only sometimes admitting that the cause of these unscheduled repairs is the destructive “drone debris” that flies freely over Russia, especially in its part closest to Europe.