Wings of Smoke and Flame

By Michael and James Hall

Authors of the popular The Sword of Damocles: Our Nuclear Age, now on Audible, Kindle and Amazon books.

Since early 2024, Ukraine has conducted a sustained campaign of long-range drone strikes against Russia's oil refineries, fuel depots, export terminals, pumping stations, and petrochemical facilities. The campaign represents one of the most significant attacks on an energy system in modern warfare and has forced Russia to divert resources toward air defense, repairs, and rationing. This is now an existential threat to Russia.

“What armies could not reach, silence and distance delivered on wings of smoke and flame.”

Poetry and Art by James Hall in style of Russian artist Ilya Repin.

If Russia were backing proxy drone strikes from Cuba or Mexico against Gulf Coast oil infrastructure, Washington would immediately treat it as an existential national security threat. Moscow views Ukraine's refinery strikes through the same lens—yet the analogy collapses on a fundamental point: the United States did not launch an unprovoked invasion of its neighbors, whereas Russia chose to invade Ukraine.

When Allied interrogators questioned Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer at the end of the Second World War, he remarked that he never understood why the strategic bombing campaign took so long to target synthetic oil refineries rather than broader industrial production. Ukraine appears to have learned that lesson.

These are the facts that can be gathered By March 2025, independent tracking by the Caspian Policy Center had documented 61 Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries since January 2024, affecting 24 separate refineries and causing fires or lasting damage in at least 40 cases. Since then, the campaign has expanded significantly. By 2026, various public assessments indicated that Ukrainian long range drone strikes had reached dozens of additional energy facilities, including refineries, fuel depots, export terminals, storage farms, and processing plants across western Russia, the Volga region, and even parts of Siberia. Among the most prominent targets were the Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod (NORSI), Tuapse, Moscow, Kirishi, Syzran, Kuibyshev, Afipsky, Ilsky, Slavyansk, and Taneco refineries, as well as the strategically important Ust-Luga export terminal. These facilities represent some of Russia's most valuable fuel production and export assets. By mid to late 2026, open source analyses estimated that well over 150 and possibly close to 200 successful strikes had been carried out against Russian oil and gas infrastructure during the year alone, with damage reported at a majority of Russia's largest refining complexes. Some assessments suggested that roughly one quarter of Russia's refining capacity had experienced disruptions at various points, while Ukrainian and independent analysts claimed even higher figures.

Several studies have attempted to quantify the broader impact of these attacks. While exact figures vary, most agree that the strikes have imposed substantial repair costs, reduced refining and disrupted distribution. This has forced Russia to divert significant resources toward air defense and infrastructure protection. Analysts have also linked the campaign to periodic fuel shortages, regional sales restrictions, higher transport costs, and declining fuel exports, making Ukraine's deep strike effort one of the most consequential economic pressure campaigns of the war.

According to a July 2026 assessment cited by the Kyiv Post, Ukrainian strikes had disabled approximately 42.7% of Russia's projected oil-refining capacity.

Another assessment stated that strikes had temporarily knocked out roughly 25% of Russia's oil refining capacity during periods of peak disruption. The Caspian Policy Center reported that Russian refining volumes fell to their lowest level in twelve years following the attacks. A later analysis stated that Russian refineries were processing approximately 1.4 million barrels per day less crude oil than previous annual averages.

Russia has been forced to deploy large numbers of air-defense systems around refineries, fuel terminals, and industrial regions, reducing flexibility elsewhere.

Many modern Russian refineries rely on specialized equipment originally sourced from Western manufacturers. Repairing damaged cracking units, distillation towers, and processing systems can take months and may require components difficult to obtain under sanctions.

NATO member states provide varying degrees of non-kinetic and materiel support to Ukraine—ranging from satellite intelligence and real-time situational awareness to electronic warfare training and airspace modeling. However, publicly available evidence indicates that Ukraine maintains direct operational planning and execution over its deep-strike drone campaign against Russian refineries. Western allies have consistently placed strict geographic and policy restrictions on the use of supplied weapons inside internationally recognized Russian territory.

One thing is clear: NATO countries such as Britain, Germany, and France have publicly warned of a broader threat from Russia. These warnings come as U.S. intelligence officials have raised concerns about the possibility of future Russian actions that could challenge NATO security.

Because Western-supplied cruise missiles—such as the UK and French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG systems—have generally been constrained or reserved for military targets in occupied territories and high-value military hubs, Ukraine has relied almost entirely on domestically designed and manufactured long-range strike drones to hit Russian energy infrastructure. Platforms like the Antonov An-196 Liutyi, the Bober (Beaver), and the rocket-powered Palianytsia were developed specifically to bypass Western political red lines while providing the 600 to 1,500+ kilometer range needed to strike deep into the Volga and central Russian refining hubs.

Ukraine's indigenous strike-drone portfolio extends beyond these well-known platforms. Reports have also referenced systems such as the Flamingo drone and a growing range of domestically developed unmanned aerial vehicles tailored for reconnaissance, electronic warfare support, and long-range precision strikes. Rather than relying on a single flagship platform, Ukraine has pursued a diversified drone ecosystem that complicates Russian air-defense planning by employing different airframes, propulsion systems, flight profiles, and payload configurations. This distributed approach enables Ukrainian planners to adapt missions to specific targets, increase operational resilience, and sustain deep-strike operations against critical infrastructure even as Russian defensive measures evolve.

While Western intelligence feeds and commercial satellite synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) likely assist Ukraine’s mission planners in mapping Russian air defense radar gaps, terrain routing, and post-strike battle damage assessment (BDA), the decision-making, targeting prioritization, and weapon systems used in the refinery strikes remain sovereign Ukrainian operations.