Russia is starting to feel, in very real terms, the cumulative impact of Ukraine’s strikes on its energy infrastructure. What could this mean in the longer term for the Kremlin’s ability to sustain the war — and for ordinary Russians? The Ukrainian Week spoke to energy and security expert Mykhailo Honchar, president of the Centre for Global Studies “Strategy XXI”.
— Russia is dealing with a worsening fuel shortage, especially in the occupied territories and Crimea. Is this directly linked to Ukrainian strikes on its oil refining infrastructure — and could it turn into a longer-term problem?
— Yes, absolutely. This is a direct consequence, but it’s also the result of a cumulative effect. That said, we shouldn’t assume that every time Ukraine’s Defence Forces hit a major refinery, oil terminal or pumping station, everything in Russia suddenly grinds to a halt. That’s not how it works, and it never could.
The impact comes from sustained, repeated strikes on oil refining infrastructure and the networks used to distribute fuel. That’s exactly what we’ve seen in occupied Crimea. The systematic actions of Ukraine’s Defence Forces throughout what I would describe as April and May 2026 have effectively turned the Crimean Peninsula into something close to an island when it comes to fuel supplies.
The reason is simple: the main supply routes have been reduced to a fraction of their former capacity. I wouldn’t say they’ve been completely cut off — not yet — but that is clearly the direction things are heading.
Traditionally, there were three such supply routes.
The first — and by far the most important — was one of the key reasons the Kerch Bridge was built in the first place. Refined petroleum products were transported by rail across the bridge and then stored at the Feodosia oil depot, which had the necessary tank storage facilities. This was how the peninsula was supplied with fuel. It is worth noting that there has never been any oil refining on the Crimean Peninsula, so it has no capacity to process crude oil itself.
The second route was even more traditional and predated the construction of the Kerch Bridge. It was the Taman–Crimea ferry crossing. As far as I recall, three ferries operated across the Kerch Strait. The largest of them, the Slavyanin, which was destroyed recently, could carry an entire train of fuel tankers. That meant roughly 50 tanker cars, each with a capacity of 60 tonnes — around 3,000 tonnes in a single trip.
The third and newest route was effectively created by Russia last year: the railway connection and the parallel R-280 highway running along the Sea of Azov from Russian territory — broadly speaking, from Rostov — to occupied Crimea via Mariupol, Melitopol, Berdiansk and on to Dzhankoi.
What happened? The story of the Kerch Bridge is well known. The bottom line is that it can no longer function the way it once did. Yes, it can still carry rail tankers loaded with fuel, but both in Crimea and in the Kremlin they remember all too well how fuel tankers went up in flames on the bridge several years ago. Today, the risk of that happening again is even greater because of Ukraine’s Defence Forces targeting the newest fuel supply route running along the Azov coast. What was once seen as a lifeline has effectively become a death trap.
The fate of the Russian oil depot is equally well known. Its tank storage facilities have been all but wiped out, leaving nowhere to store fuel — and, increasingly, little fuel to store. The ferries are gone too. Every one of them has been destroyed.
What we are witnessing now is a fuel crisis that is spreading at speed. It began in Crimea, but it is now spilling over into the occupied territories in southern and eastern Ukraine. And the problem is no longer confined to occupied territory. The same dynamic is starting to spread across southern Russia and is edging towards Moscow and St Petersburg. The situation there is not yet critical, and the authorities will do everything they can to protect the two capitals. But their room for manoeuvre is shrinking. Over the past few weeks, a substantial share of Russia’s oil refining capacity has been knocked out by strikes from Ukraine’s Defence Forces.
— Russian officials argue that strikes on oil refineries don’t really matter, since any crude oil that isn’t processed can simply be sold and the proceeds used to buy fuel abroad. Is there any truth to that?
– We can speculate now over all sorts of hypothetical scenarios, but the reality is much simpler. Selling crude oil instead of refining it — which is what Russia is increasingly doing now — brings in quick cash, but less of it. Refined petroleum products generate far greater added value.
With crude oil, the chain is relatively straightforward: you extract it, transport it, load it onto a tanker and sell it. Refining adds another link to that chain. Yes, it takes more time, but it also generates higher returns. At the same time, the logistics are completely different. Crude oil moves primarily through pipelines. Only a small share of refined petroleum products can be transported that way; most have to go by rail. That means different costs, more complicated logistics and greater technical challenges.
That’s why Russia is now clearly prioritising crude oil exports. But the idea that it can simply use the proceeds to buy refined petroleum products abroad is far less convincing. Russia is selling its crude at significant discounts. No one, however, is going to sell them refined petroleum products at a discount — not even the countries that continue to buy Russian oil.
I am talking about China, India and Turkey, the main buyers of Russian crude. They may be willing to purchase discounted oil, but they are not going to return the favour when it comes to selling fuel. So that kind of arrangement is unlikely to work. The only real exception is Belarus, where such a scheme does appear to function.
This is where Ukraine’s Defence Forces have considerable room to act. I expect the Kremlin will try to squeeze every possible litre of fuel out of Lukashenko, drawing on the output of Belarus’s two oil refineries in Mozyr and Polotsk. Their products have always made their way onto the Russian market to some extent, but never on this scale. That is because the Lukashenko regime has long depended on exporting refined petroleum products through Russian territory to foreign markets.
Now, however, much of that output will be redirected to Russia itself, and Lukashenko will have little choice but to go along with it. For years — in fact, for decades — Russia has supplied Belarus with crude oil at specially discounted prices. As a result, what exists in practice is essentially a tolling arrangement, with Belarus refining Russian crude and producing fuel under highly favourable terms.
— What exactly do you mean when you talk about opportunities for action by Ukraine’s Defence Forces? Are you referring to possible strikes on Belarusian facilities themselves, or on pipelines running through Russian territory?
— Strikes on Belarusian refineries, in my view, would only be justified if the Lukashenko regime were to formally join Russia’s war against Ukraine, as it effectively did in 2022 before later stepping back. But everything located in the space between the Belarusian border and the outskirts of Moscow is, so to speak, within the reach of Ukraine’s Defence Forces’ strike capabilities. Just look at a map. If strikes are now reaching St Petersburg, that effectively means that the distance from Ukraine’s border to Belarus’s northern frontier — across the Bryansk, Smolensk and Pskov regions that border Belarus — is a little over 500 kilometres.
In other words, this sits squarely within the concept of deep-strike operations. The area is criss-crossed by major rail and road links between Russia and Belarus. That opens up a range of opportunities for Ukraine’s forces, broadly similar to what we are now seeing in the south, where strikes are being carried out against railway lines and highways built by Russia along the Azov coast.
Strikes are already being carried out against ports on the Sea of Azov, currently occupied by Russia. It is only a matter of time before they extend to Russia’s own Azov coastline. What is the Azov region, in essence? It is the delta of the Don River. The Sea of Azov is relatively narrow, which means that, in one way or another, everything there is within reach.
The first priority, in my view, should be to constrain the supply of petroleum products, above all to the Moscow metropolitan area. If we look at the Polotsk refinery, it is most likely to be oriented towards supplying Russia’s north-western regions, including St Petersburg.
The situation there is, in a sense, quite ripe for strikes as well — starting from Bryansk and stretching through the Smolensk and Pskov regions. I think it is only a matter of time before we see exactly that.
— How much are Ukrainian strikes on oil infrastructure affecting Russia’s ability to fight along the entire front line? Are they a significant factor in what’s currently limiting its ability to capture more territory?
— It is certainly one element that contributes to that outcome. But it has to be seen as part of a wider picture because, historically, Russia’s military logistics has been built primarily around its railway network.
What is not always discussed is that traction substations on the Russian railways have also been targeted. In the European part of Russia, the rail system is almost entirely electrified, and replacing electric locomotives with diesel ones is far from straightforward. As a result, fuel for combat units is first moved by rail tanker cars and only then transported from intermediate depots by fuel trucks — many of which have been successfully destroyed by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and other Defence Forces units. So yes, it does have an impact.
And this is not just about fuel for military hardware. It applies to the entire supply chain. If the rail network slows down, every subsequent link in the chain is delayed as well, and deliveries arrive later than planned.
That brings us back to a fairly basic principle of military strategy: to defeat an enemy, you first have to disrupt its logistics, communications and lines of connectivity. You need to strike its forces and assets hard enough to effectively paralyse its combat activity. That’s why this element — disrupting fuel logistics and fuel production capacity — is so significant.
Initially, the aim was to reduce Russia’s financial revenues. But as we can see, the situation shifted fundamentally after the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran, which pushed oil prices higher. That, without question, has boosted Kremlin revenues, giving it a kind of “doping effect” that helps sustain the war for longer. Still, this is not a lifeline for the Russian economy, because military spending remains the overriding priority. What it does mean is that the Kremlin will continue the war, once again on the assumption that it can secure a strategic breakthrough in the coming months. We have seen this pattern before, when either winter or summer campaigns were declared to be decisive victories.
What we are now seeing in St Petersburg carries not only military but also clear symbolic weight. The point is not simply that three or more tanks storing crude oil or fuel oil were struck, but the context in which it happened. The Kremlin had designed the St Petersburg International Economic Forum as a showcase of a return to “business as usual”. Delegations from the United States and Germany — which have stayed away in recent years — were expected to attend.
Moscow had hoped the forum would serve as a powerful piece of propaganda aimed at Europe and the United States — a signal that, despite the war and sanctions, Russia was supposedly returning to normality, or that the world itself was moving back towards cooperation with Russia. Instead, as we have seen, the forum received a rather eloquent and, quite literally, fiery welcome from the banks of the Dnipro.
I think that for many of Putin’s guests, this may prompt a reassessment of both the Kremlin’s prospects and, more broadly, the risks of doing business in Russia.
— How well prepared is Ukraine for the coming winter — and the next phase of Russia’s energy strikes? Is it doing enough at this point? If not, what more should be done?
— It will be impossible to do everything, just as in previous years. What matters is reaching the critically necessary minimum. Restoring power generation capacity is a process that takes years, not months. That means you need parallel systems in place — backup solutions alongside decentralisation, especially in heat production. Will that be achievable nationwide? I think the minimum critical needs will be met. But there’s no point in having illusions.
Especially given how uneven the situation is from city to city. We can clearly see what Russia is doing to cities like Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy — cities close to the Russian border or the front line. I would describe it as resembling the Aleppo tactic Russia used in Syria, except that there Russians relied on aerial bombardment, whereas here they cannot operate in the same way and instead turn to missiles and drones.
Odesa is another example, where the pressure has always been particularly intense. Arguably, Kharkiv has shown the greatest resilience, flexibility and adaptability. Kyiv, by contrast, is a very different case.
The core issue is not that the Kyiv city authorities are less effective than, say, those in Kharkiv. Rather, the problem is that despite the scale of the threat — which clearly calls for close coordination between the city administration and the central government — that coordination remains strained. Kyiv continues to be deprived of part of its funding on one pretext or another. The mayor argues that there is simply not enough money, and therefore, not much can be done. But even when funding was available, the results were still limited. So that is the reality. From the perspective of Kyiv’s preparedness for the next heating season, this is what concerns me most.
At the same time, we still have the summer to get through, and it has only just begun. Of course, Russia’s stockpile of missiles and drones is not infinite, and its priorities shift. In the most recent large-scale combined strike, energy infrastructure was not among the primary targets. Yes, some local facilities were hit and damaged, but overall the energy system — the main transmission lines and substations — continued to function. It is also possible that some of those strikes were intended for such targets but failed to reach them because they were intercepted by air defence systems. In any case, the grid remained operational.
In summer, the system is also significantly supported by sunlight — something, of course, that will not be there in winter.
Getting through the winter successfully will happen not because of the authorities’ actions — as is often the case — but despite them, or their inaction. That is why we are now seeing a noticeable surge in activity in larger cities, particularly in residential areas. Homeowners’ associations, local communities and similar groups are increasingly taking matters into their own hands at the local level. I think that is the right approach — not waiting for decisions in Kyiv or at regional level, but doing everything possible on the ground. The experience of surviving recent winters has already proved that point.
What worries me here is the difference in approach. In the power sector, Ukrenergo — the transmission system operator — has not only accumulated enormous experience over the past years, but has also implemented much of the necessary engineering protection for key elements of the main grid. That is why the system is still holding up. Yes, it is operating under abnormal conditions, but it continues to function.
The same cannot be said for Naftogaz of Ukraine. There, the problem appears to have been recognised only relatively recently — in fact, only this winter, when, if I recall correctly, a strike on 27 January hit the Brody Line Production and Dispatch Station and damaged a large oil storage tank. Only then did serious consideration begin of how to provide engineering protection for critical oil and gas infrastructure.
Of course, Ukrenergo’s experience cannot simply be transplanted into the oil and gas sector. These are fundamentally different systems, both in terms of scale and physical characteristics, as well as function. But it has become clear that this issue was not properly addressed at all, despite the fact that strikes have been taking place since 2022.
