Exclusive: Ukraine, With Peace Talks in the Offing, Flexes Its Muscles With a New Strategy in the Drone War

As President Trump sizes up Russia and Ukraine prior to peace talks, Kyiv is flexing its muscles with a new war strategy. It is using an expanding, newly powerful fleet of locally made drones to attack Russia’s oil refineries as far as 1,000 miles to the east.Treating the 1.5 million square miles of European Russia as a hunting ground, Ukrainian drone commanders in the last 10 days have severely damaged three of the region’s five largest oil refineries. They also forced Russia’s second-largest oil exporting port on the Baltic to “pause” exports.“By bringing Putin’s invasion home to Russia, Kyiv aims to disrupt Moscow’s battlefield operations, expose Russia’s vulnerability, and establish the kind of deterrence that could eventually help set the stage for a durable peace,” Henry Jackson Society research fellow David Kirichenko writes last week in an Atlantic Council essay titled: “Ukrainian drones and missiles target Putin’s war machine inside Russia.”The pause in oil exports from Ust-Luga comes as Ukraine tries out its own brand of petro politics. Upstream from the port, drones hit two pumping stations on Druzhba, the world’s longest pipeline. By knocking out the Unecha pumping station, the Ukrainian drones turned off oil flows to Ust-Luga. Last year, this modern port handled about 650,000 barrels a day of crude, about 20 percent of Russia’s total seaborne flows, Bloomberg calculates. Loading stopped Wednesday at the port.Firefighters work at the Ilsky Oil Refinery manufacturing complex in the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, May 4, 2023. Governor Veniamin Kondratyev’s Telegram channel via APAlmost simultaneously, Ukraine hit a second pumping station at Novozbykov. This sent a threat to two downstream customers of Russian oil — Hungary and Slovakia. Three years after Vladimir Putin launched his all-out attack on Ukraine, these two land-locked Central European nations still rely heavily on Russia for oil. Ukraine hit the pumping station on Thursday, just as Hungary tangled with the European Union over renewing sanctions against Russia. Oil and gas revenues cover about 30 percent of Russia’s federal budget, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak of Russia wrote last week. On January 13, Ukraine failed to knock out with cruise missiles a compressor station used to fill TurkStream, Russia’s last gas pipeline to Europe. Last spring, Biden administration officials asked President Zelensky not to target Russia’s oil exporting infrastructure. The fear was this would inflate summer gasoline prices before the election.As a result, Ukraine re-focused on refineries that feed the Russian war machine. It also vastly upgraded its drone fleet. Almost two years ago, Ukraine exploded on a Kremlin roof the equivalent of a flying firecracker. Today, Ukraine sends into Russia light aircraft capable of carrying 500-pound bombs to targets 1,000 miles away. With most of these propeller planes made in Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky has set a production goal of 30,000 for this year.Six months ago, Mr. Zelensky established the world’s first standalone drone force, the Unmanned Systems Force. Now, with 3,000 soldiers, the Force uses 170 different kinds of drones. Most are locally manufactured. Last week President Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation: “I want to thank all Ukrainian developers and manufacturers of long-range drones, our missiles. Everyone can see their effectiveness — how our weapons return the war to Russia and how Russia’s war potential is reduced.”Ukraine’s strategy is to flood the zone by sending in waves of kamikaze planes that overwhelm Russian air defenses. Last night, for example, explosions were reported in Bryansk and Rostov regions. Simultaneously, Russian news channels warned of strikes expected in Belgorod, Voronezh, Tambov, Volgograd, Saratov, Samara, Penza, Saransk, Ryazan, and Nizhny Novgorod. A gas processing plant was hit in Astrakhan, 600 miles southeast of Ukraine. To ensure air safety, flights were suspended from the airports of Astrakhan and five other regions.As drone explosions and night-time air defense tracers become the new normal for the 110 million Russians of Western Russia, President Putin has taken political cover by giving the 49 regional governors the responsibility for local air defense. The governors routinely report numbers of drones shot down. They attribute fires to falling drone “debris.”“Russian propaganda constantly claims to have ‘shot down’ such aircraft, but explosions at military-industrial complexes, refineries, and ammunition depots suggest otherwise,” Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said Friday in a statement. “There have already been dozens of such missions, and there will be more.”Belying the governors’ “debris” announcements, the Russian internet fills almost nightly with cell phone videos of burning refineries. In this David versus Goliath battle, Ukrainians know that a refinery can be a big force multiplier for a $150,000 drone. A popular Ukrainian meme posted on the Internet is “Russian Oil Refinery Bingo” — a card with red X’s crossing out photos of damaged Russian refineries.Here are the big three hits of the last 10 days:Last night, long-range drones hit for the second time in three days Lukoil’s refinery at Volgograd, about 500 miles east of Ukraine. With a refining capacity of 280,000 barrels a day, the refinery is one of the top five in Western Russia. “The refinery produces gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, and aviation fuel,” Andrii Kovalenko, of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, posted on X.Before dawn Wednesday morning, the sky above Nizhny Novgorod, 500 miles east of Ukraine, burned orange after Ukrainian drones set afire the Lukoil’s Kstovo refinery. Often listed as the fourth-largest in Russia, the complex has the capacity to refine 300,000 barrels a day. A neighboring petrochemical plant, owned by Sibur, also caught fire. Managers suspended production.On January 26, drones hit — for the second time in two days — Rosneft’s refinery at Ryazan about 300 miles northeast of Ukraine. The refinery has a capacity of refining 262,000 barrels a day, making it one of the nation’s largest. Due to fires, production at the refinery is suspended. Most of Russia’s refineries were built, or upgraded, in the 1990s with Western technology. With the US and European sanctions, it is difficult and expensive to get replacement parts. In one case, a refinery five miles from Ukraine’s border was the target of so many drone attacks that managers last week stopped operations indefinitely. With a 150,000 barrels a day refining capacity, Novoshakhtinsk had been supplying fuel for tanks, armored vehicles, and aircraft. While Russia’s leaders act as if Russia can take this in its stride, many outsiders say Russia’s internal security situation is unraveling in the face of mounting drone attacks. On Friday, Germany’s foreign ministry “strongly discouraged” citizens from traveling to Russia due to rising drone attacks.

Exclusive: Ukraine, With Peace Talks in the Offing, Flexes Its Muscles With a New Strategy in the Drone War

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