Ukraine’s Military Drones Close Russian Oil Export Ports, as Kyiv’s Technology Marks Turn in Fast-Evolving Air War

Highlighting a new level in Ukraine’s drone warfare against Russia, long-range drones closed Russia’s largest two oil-exporting ports yesterday, taking 1 million barrels a day off world markets. By the end of Monday, one port, Ust-Luga, was back on line. Yet fires raged into this morning at its sister port, Primorsk, 50 miles across the Gulf of Finland.Ukraine’s mass attack created war tableaux not seen in Russia since World War II. Evoking Germany’s 1941-1944 siege of Leningrad, Russian anti-aircraft fire arced across the night sky of Leningrad Region. At Moscow, jeep-mounted anti-aircraft guns were posted near Red Square and around the onion domes of the Kremlin.This display of Ukrainian drone technology helps explain the rush by Persian Gulf states to hire Ukrainian experts to defend against Iran’s Shahed drones. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, 228 Ukrainian military drone experts now are deployed to five Gulf countries, helping design protection against Iranian attacks.Back home, there is more to come. Ukraine’s leading drone and missile manufacturer, Fire Point, plans to test this summer the FP-9, a ballistic missile designed to fly to Moscow from northeast Ukraine in five minutes. It would carry a one-ton warhead.President Volodymyr Zelensky at Dublin, December 2, 2025. AP/Peter MorrisonThis month marks a turning point in the fast-evolving drone war. On many days, Ukraine has fired more long-range drones and missiles into Russia than Russia has fired into Ukraine, calculates a Kyiv Post senior defense correspondent, Stefan Korshak.Between January and March 2026, “the pace of attacks had effectively doubled to around four separate targets attacked every night,” Mr. Korshak writes from Kyiv. “The number of unmanned aerial vehicles crossing into Russian airspace had on average more than doubled as well,” he adds, “to 100-200 air-raiding drones in the past six weeks” from “50-70 unmanned aircraft in the last months of 2025.” A day does not go by without a report of a new nighttime attack on a Russian oil refinery, oil depot, or military factory. In addition to hitting the two ports on the Baltic, 600 miles north of Ukraine, Ukraine last week hit refineries at Afipsky, Saratov, Tolyatti, and Ufa. Until the Iran war boosted oil prices, Russia’s oil export earnings were dipping toward half the levels of a year ago.Three days after Ukrainian drones severely damaged a military semiconductor factory, killing six workers, President Vladimir Putin convened his Security Council to discuss how to protect critical infrastructure from Ukrainian attacks. In one concrete step, Mr. Putin yesterday signed a law allowing the National Guard to issue automatic weapons to private security companies. Built when external threats were more fiction than reality, Russia’s sprawling fuel and energy archipelago is largely protected by company guards armed with pistols and shotguns. President Vladimir Putin at the Eastern Economic Forum, Vladivostok, Russia, September 5, 2025. Stepan Pugachev/Roscongress Foundation via APAs attacks on Russian cities become routine, Mr. Putin breaks a core political pledge to the Russian people: protection from foreign attack. Last week, the secretary of Russia’s security council, Sergei Shoigu, admitted the obvious.“The dynamics of development of [Ukrainian] strikes systems, most of all by unmanned aircraft and the sophistication of the tactics of their use are such that not a single region in Russia can consider itself safe,” Mr. Shoigu, a former defense minister, told state news agency TASS. Referring to a mountain range 1,000 miles east of Ukraine, he added: “Just recently the Ural region was unreachable by air strikes from the territory of Ukraine. Now that region is firmly in the zone of constant threat.”Russia’s rear also is vulnerable because of Ukraine’s strategy to take out Russia’s air defense systems. During the first three weeks of this month, Ukraine’s drone branch, the Unmanned Systems Forces, claims to have destroyed 26 Russian air defense systems. Last month, the Alpha unit of Ukraine’s State Security Service said it had destroyed about half of Russia’s mobile Pantsir missile air defense systems. “The systematic destruction of SAMs and radar stations is happening at such a pace that the Russian military-industrial complex does not have time to compensate for the losses by producing new systems, which is why it is necessary [for Russia] to leave the rear without cover,” Ukrainian defense review Oboronka concluded last week.Without enough cover on the front lines, Russian soldiers are easy targets for Ukraine’s short range drone operators. Over the last week, Russia launched an unheralded — and so far abortive — offensive in Ukraine’s southeast.Inspecting Flamingo cruise missiles at Fire Point’s secret factory in Ukraine on August 18, 2025. AP/Efrem LukatskyRussian soldiers made 619 attacks on Ukrainian positions, Ukraine’s armed forces commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, told reporters at Kyiv yesterday. Without breaking through Ukrainian lines, Russia lost 8,710 soldiers killed and seriously wounded. He did not report Ukrainian losses.In retaliation, the Kremlin overnight launched a drone and missile strike against Ukraine, the AP reported. Ukraine’s air force is calling it Russia’s largest attack in several weeks. The strike, which included nearly 400 long-range drones, 23 cruise missiles, and seven ballistic missiles, hit “at least 10 locations” in Ukraine, the AP said, citing the Ukrainian air force, and continued into daylight hours today.Although Mr. Putin imposes on Russia internet censorship and controls comparable to those of Communist China, the cost of his war is getting out. Last week’s big shock came from a longtime Putin ally, Ilya Remeslo, who posted on Telegram an unexpected manifesto: “Five Reasons Why I Stopped Supporting Vladimir Putin.”“Started as a ‘police operation,’ the war has already claimed 1.2 million casualties,” he wrote, citing a generally accepted figure for Russian military dead and severely wounded. “A completely dead-end war, enormous losses, it could go on for another 5-10 years — are you ready for that?” Mr. Remeslo asked.“Sanctions, destroyed infrastructure, loss of trading partners. Even according to official statistics, this represents trillions of dollars, which could have been used to build cities, schools, children’s hospitals,” said Mr. Remeslo, a 42-year-old lawyer previously known for his outspoken support of the regime. “But what’s being built are mostly palaces for the president and his friends.”Mr. Putin “is afraid of participating in debates and fair elections — because then it will immediately become clear that the emperor has no clothes,” concluded Mr. Remeslo. “Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate president. Vladimir Putin must resign and be brought to trial as a war criminal and a thief.”When skeptics suggested that his Telegram account had been hacked, Mr. Remeslo recorded and posted a video recording of his 640-word manifesto. A few hours later, he was cut off from the internet and committed to St. Petersburg Psychiatric Hospital No. 3.

Ukraine’s Military Drones Close Russian Oil Export Ports, as Kyiv’s Technology Marks Turn in Fast-Evolving Air War

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