Ukrainian drones: dangerous needle sticks against Putin’s regime The dubious attacks in Russia in 1999 – were they the stunt of Putin’s journeyman?

Until recently, people in Novokuybishevsk, Russia, could actually believe they were safe. The city is almost 1,000 kilometers from the border with Ukraine and the war is far away. Yet the residents were woken up at four in the morning last Saturday by a huge explosion.

As videos from eyewitnesses show, a Ukrainian drone hit the oil processing plant not far from the city of Samara with over a million inhabitants. Coming just a few hours after the Islamist terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow, it is a blow from the perspective of Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Cell phone footage showed a large fire. According to the governor of the Samara region, the Ukrainian drone accurately hit the so-called distillation tower, the most important part of the plant, without which no gas, gasoline or diesel can be extracted from crude oil.

The Ukrainian attack series

With the shelling of the oil refinery, Ukraine has continued its series of attacks on the Russian oil industry. On March 17, on the final day of Putin’s presidential election farce, one or more Ukrainian drones hit a refinery in Slavyansk in the southern Russian Black Sea region of Krasnodar. According to regional authorities, the subsequent fire was not extinguished until hours later.

On March 16, a power plant belonging to the energy company Rosneft burned down in the Samara region, about 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian drones caused a fire at the refinery in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow. This company also belongs to Rosneft, the largest Russian oil company.

On March 12, the Norsi refinery of the Lukoil group in Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga burned. And as Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, a fuel depot in Russia’s southwestern region of Oryol was set on fire by a drone.

In Nizhny Novgorod, at least half of the refinery’s production had to be halted, according to Reuters news agency. Norsi is already a real heavyweight in the Russian oil industry: in 2023, approximately 4.9 million tons of fuel were refined here. That is 11 percent of total Russian production and 6.4 percent of diesel refined nationwide. The Russian army mainly needs diesel fuel for its vehicles.

The business news agency Bloomberg recorded a total of fifteen such events as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes from January 21 to March 17, with varying degrees of serious consequences for production sites. Of these, nine factories were successfully attacked and are said to have paralyzed 11 percent of the country’s production, according to Bloomberg.

Where Ukraine attacked Russia with drones

How does Putin react?

Russia responded with the most extensive missile attacks in months. According to Ukrainian information, Russia fired around 190 missiles and 140 Shahed drones last week, mainly at the country’s energy infrastructure. Russia has destroyed the country’s largest hydroelectric power plant and scores of electricity and substations, especially in Kharkiv, which has had to ration electricity for days. On Monday, the Ukrainian capital Kiev was attacked with hypersonic missiles.

The Russian president wants these attacks to be seen as retaliation. And the demonstrative harshness shows that the attacks on refineries certainly worry Putin.

Result: Significantly less gasoline is produced

Torbjörn Törnqvist, head of the Gunvor Group, one of the world’s largest oil traders, estimated in an interview with Bloomberg that about 600,000 barrels of Russia’s daily oil refining capacity have been knocked out by Ukrainian drone strikes. Shortly after the start of the war two years ago, about 44 refineries were operating in Russia, with a total capacity of about seven million barrels per day. Because five refineries had already been damaged by mid-February, the Russian government imposed a precautionary ban on gasoline exports from March 1 to the end of August this year.

Russia’s state statistics service Rosstat also reported a decline in production in the past two months. The authority reported weekly values ​​for gasoline and diesel production. Since mid-January, gasoline production has fallen by more than eight percent. Production of diesel, of which Russia produces about twice as much as gasoline, fell by only four percent. The running statistics are considered reliable by analysts.

Ukraine is responding with the drone attacks mainly based on a dire situation: because the West is late in delivering urgently needed artillery shells and Putin’s army is making progress in eastern Ukraine, sensitive infrastructure in Russia is now increasingly being attacked with cheap but effective domestic weapons. -made combat drones. Even in the hinterland, the drones can now be moved more than 1,000 kilometers. A special unit created specifically for this purpose is behind the attacks.

The Russian leadership needs oil and gas exports

The purpose of the attacks on refineries and oil depots seems clear: they are intended to increase the costs of the invasion of Ukraine for Vladimir Putin. A spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence recently said: Every explosion in Russian oil refineries also interrupts the occupying forces’ fuel supply. This helps save the lives of Ukrainian citizens; tanks cannot function without fuel.

Due to the damage to the systems, petrol and diesel will also become scarcer and more expensive in Russia. The Russian drivers would feel this too at some point. The biggest effect here would probably be dissatisfaction among the population. “Gasoline prices are political, even in Russia,” wrote Janis Kluge, Russia expert the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP), a Berlin think tank. “The average Russian is not willing to pay a price for war.”

What’s the point?

So far, the Ukrainians’ attacks have focused on refineries that supply domestic supplies. So far, they have had only limited impact on global oil market prices. That would change if crude oil exports stagnated. For example, if export terminals in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea are attacked. This could significantly damage Russia’s leadership, as the country is dependent on its oil and gas exports, even if they only go to a few countries.

But a subsequent sharp rise in global oil prices could also cause unrest among Ukraine’s Western allies. US officials are said to have already asked representatives of the Ukrainian state security service and military intelligence to stop the drone attacks, the Financial Times reports. There are fears of a rise in global oil prices and US gasoline prices, which could hurt President Joe Biden’s re-election.

The U.S. government is also concerned that Russia could shut down a pipeline that supplies oil from Kazakhstan to the world market through Russia. So far, Ukraine has apparently not heeded these warnings. Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, said she understood the concerns in the West. Nevertheless, refineries are legitimate targets.

Now the current estimated loss of 600,000 barrels per day of refinery capacity seems very high. However, it is probably not enough to really damage Putin and his regime, even though eleven percent of the Russian Federation’s total oil refining capacity has already been temporarily disabled. The average amount of refined oil per day in Russia was still 5.21 million barrels in February 2024, according to Bloomberg, which is a lot despite the drop due to the drone attacks.

The diesel for the Russian tanks will not run out anytime soon

Russia and the Soviet Union have built up a huge oil and gas industry in recent decades, and it could continue to help Vladimir Putin in the energy field during the war. The reserves are large because in addition to the large factories on Russian territory, there are also numerous mini-refineries, and many of them are located outside the 1,000 kilometer radius of the Ukrainian drones.

Moreover, most operations are running well below their maximum capacity, so a failure could be compensated by starting up other refineries, the Bloomberg agency wrote in another analysis a few days ago. For the time being, it looks more like needle pricks that Ukraine is imposing on Putin with its drone operations.

In any case, the Russian military would likely be the last to feel the effects of a fuel shortage. Diesel for Russian tanks and military vehicles would not run out anytime soon, but Russia’s refining capacity would have to be virtually depleted.

The fact that Vladimir Putin, in his imperial madness, wants to continue the war against Ukraine was recently made clear during his election victory celebration on Red Square, when he was applauded for the occupation of Ukrainian territories. The SWP’s Kluge therefore believes that Ukraine has only scratched the surface so far. Ukraine’s attacks are likely to continue. Ukraine currently does not have many options to actually hit Russia.

This article first appeared on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.