Ukraine says its expanding long-range strike campaign has put 51% of Russia’s oil refining capacity out of operation, an assessment Moscow has not confirmed even as President Vladimir Putin acknowledges attacks on refineries have inflicted measurable damage on the Russian economy.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine says repeated long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have knocked more than half of the country’s refining capacity out of operation, as both sides increasingly turn to drones and long-range weapons while the ground war remains largely deadlocked.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that strikes on refineries and energy facilities stretching from the Moscow region to deeper inside Russia had disabled 51% of the country’s oil refining capacity.
The Ukrainian assessment could not be independently verified, and Russian authorities have not released comprehensive figures detailing refinery damage or the amount of capacity currently offline. The latest Ukrainian claim nevertheless represents Kyiv’s strongest assertion yet about the effect of its campaign against one of the pillars of the Russian economy.
Recent Ukrainian strikes have targeted facilities in and around Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ust-Luga, Perm, Saratov and Syzran, among other locations.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said the estimate was compiled through assessments by the country’s intelligence services, General Staff and Defense Ministry.
“Fifty-one percent of struck refining capacity is a significant blow to the enemy’s economy, to its ability to carry out aggression and supply its troop groupings. Our deep strikes continue to bring the war to Russian territory,” Khmara said.
Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russian refineries, fuel depots and other petroleum infrastructure in an attempt to damage Moscow’s ability to finance and supply its military operations.
The campaign has also contributed to fuel disruptions inside Russia.
Repeated attacks earlier this year helped trigger gasoline shortages in parts of the country, forcing authorities in some regions to restrict sales and take other steps intended to stabilize domestic supplies.
Russia has generally declined to provide detailed public assessments of the damage.
Putin, however, made a rare acknowledgment Thursday that the refinery campaign has had an economic effect.
“They started attacking oil refineries and openly declared the goal of damaging our economy. Did they achieve their goal? Partially,” Putin said during the Valdai Discussion Club forum.
Putin said Russia had lost roughly 1% of its gross domestic product because of the strikes, a notable admission from a government that has frequently emphasized the resilience of the Russian economy.
According to a Reuters account of Putin’s remarks, the Russian president said Moscow had responded by striking Ukrainian infrastructure that it considers important to Kyiv’s economy.
Russia’s oil and gas sector remains central to government finances and the broader economy despite years of Western sanctions imposed since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine has therefore sought to strike refineries rather than limiting its attacks to military bases near the border.
Some targets have been hundreds of miles inside Russian territory, demonstrating Kyiv’s growing ability to conduct long-range drone and missile operations well beyond the approximately 1,200-kilometer, or 750-mile, front.
The campaign has also become a point of disagreement between Kyiv and Washington.
President Donald Trump has urged Ukraine to avoid attacks that could disrupt Russian oil production and contribute to increases in global fuel prices.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Kyiv intends to continue and expand strikes against Russian refineries, arguing that energy revenue helps finance Moscow’s war.
In an interview published over the weekend, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would answer Russia’s intensified attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure by targeting the Russian energy sector.
The Ukrainian president said refinery strikes would continue while insisting Kyiv would not deliberately mirror what he described as Russian attacks against civilian targets.
The long-range exchange is becoming increasingly important because neither side has produced a decisive breakthrough along the battlefield.
After more than four and a half years of war, fighting across northern, eastern and southern Ukraine has yielded relatively modest territorial changes in recent months despite heavy casualties and repeated offensives.
Both countries have consequently expanded efforts to damage each other far behind the front.
Russia has intensified attacks against Ukrainian cities, electrical infrastructure, ports and transportation networks using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and increasingly sophisticated drones.
Ukraine has concentrated many of its deepest strikes on Russia’s petroleum industry and military logistics.
The escalation continued overnight into Monday.
Russia launched 205 drones against Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which said 172 were shot down or electronically suppressed.
The attack included newer jet-powered drones that have become a growing problem for Ukrainian air defenses because of their greater speed and operating altitude.
One Russian drone attack killed a person in Kharkiv and wounded six others late Sunday, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov.
Vehicles and an administrative building caught fire, while apartment buildings were damaged in the northeastern city.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday that its forces had struck an electrical substation in the Kharkiv region as well as Ukrainian energy and port infrastructure and vessels it said were being used for military purposes.
Moscow maintains that its strikes are directed at military or military-related targets.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of deliberately striking civilian infrastructure and residential areas, an allegation Moscow denies.
Ukraine is simultaneously experimenting with new defenses against Russia’s growing drone arsenal.
Presidential defense-technology adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov said Kyiv has installed 12 automated gun turrets designed to engage high-speed Shahed-type drones.
The systems combine machine guns with artificial-intelligence-based targeting technology that can identify and track incoming aircraft.
“Turrets are an innovative Ukrainian solution that shoots down Shaheds using machine guns controlled by artificial intelligence,” Beskrestnov said in describing the new defensive systems installed around Kyiv.
Additional systems are planned.
The introduction of automated weapons reflects the changing nature of the aerial war.
Russia has increasingly deployed jet-powered versions of its attack drones, presenting Ukrainian defenders with targets substantially faster than older propeller-driven Shahed-type aircraft.
Traditional mobile machine-gun teams and inexpensive interceptor drones can struggle against the higher speeds, while using expensive surface-to-air missiles against relatively cheap unmanned aircraft can rapidly exhaust limited air-defense inventories.
Ukraine is consequently experimenting with automated machine guns, interceptor drones and fighter aircraft to create additional defensive layers.
Russia says it is facing an equally large volume of Ukrainian drone attacks.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses intercepted 199 Ukrainian drones overnight across Russian territory, the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea.
Those claims also could not be independently verified.
The scale of the competing drone operations illustrates how far the conflict has evolved from the artillery-dominated battles that characterized much of the early war.
Long-range unmanned aircraft now routinely travel hundreds of miles to attack energy installations, transportation infrastructure, military facilities and other targets.
For Ukraine, Russian oil infrastructure has become one of the highest-priority categories.
Kyiv argues that damaging refining operations achieves several objectives simultaneously: reducing supplies available for Russian forces, forcing Moscow to redirect resources toward repairs and air defense, disrupting domestic fuel markets and cutting into revenues that support the war.
The economic effect has become increasingly visible.
Russian energy earnings have faced pressure even as global oil prices remain elevated. Reuters reported Monday that Russian oil and gas revenues have fallen as production and exports contend with wartime disruptions, infrastructure attacks and currency effects.
Putin’s acknowledgment that Ukrainian refinery attacks have cost the country roughly 1% of GDP provides one of Moscow’s clearest public indications that Kyiv’s strategy is producing measurable economic damage.
Whether Ukraine has actually disabled 51% of Russia’s total refining capacity remains less certain.
The figure is a Ukrainian government assessment, and Moscow has not released data allowing an independent comparison. Refineries that are struck also do not necessarily remain completely disabled; some facilities can continue operating at reduced capacity or return to service after repairs.
The scale, duration and operational effect of the outages therefore remain difficult to establish independently.
What is increasingly clear is that oil infrastructure has become a central battlefield in the war.
Ukraine is attempting to turn Russia’s enormous energy industry into a vulnerability, while Moscow is responding with an expanding aerial campaign against Ukraine’s power grid, ports and other infrastructure.
With neither military gaining decisive ground along the front, each side is increasingly trying to weaken the other’s ability to sustain the war from hundreds of miles away.
Kyiv says its refinery campaign has now reached a major threshold.
“Fifty-one percent of struck refining capacity is a significant blow to the enemy’s economy,” Khmara said.
For Ukraine, the next objective is to keep that pressure on Russia while surviving an increasingly intense Russian campaign against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure — a contest that is moving more of the war away from the trenches and deeper into both countries.
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