Gasoline prices soared to record highs in Russia this week amid growing reports of fuel shortages due to an escalating Ukrainian bombing campaign targeting Russia’s oil refineries. Social media has been flooded with videos showing long lines of cars and lorries queuing up at gas stations in regions across Russia and in occupied parts of Ukraine, highlighting the scale of the mounting crisis.
Ukrainian long-range drone strikes have knocked out around 13 percent of the Russia’s oil refining capacity since the beginning of August, the Moscow Times reports. The situation is proving particularly challenging as the supply disruption caused by Ukrainian airstrikes is coinciding with a period of peak seasonal demand due to summer travel and the upcoming harvest season.
News of Russia’s growing fuel shortages has been welcomed by many in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s influential chief of staff Andriy Yermak noted that Russia had earlier done everything it could to deprive Ukraine of fuel. “Now they suddenly face shortages themselves,” he commented. “That’s what happens when you attack Ukrainians.”
Ukraine’s unfolding bombing campaign is no mere act of righteous retribution, of course. The recent strikes against Russia’s oil industry infrastructure are designed to directly hit Putin’s war economy and undermine his ability to continue bankrolling the invasion of Ukraine. With Kyiv’s European and American allies seemingly reluctant to impose tougher sanctions measures against the Russian energy sector, Ukrainians see the current wave of drone attacks as a highly effective form of “direct sanctions.”
The Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries since the beginning of August are part of a wider pattern. In recent weeks, Ukraine has also struck multiple military production sites inside Russia, along with a number of fuel trains and logistics hubs in areas close to the front lines of the war. On August 18, Ukrainian drones destroyed the pumping station for the Druzhba pipeline in Russia’s Tambov region, shutting down this strategically important element of the Kremlin’s energy infrastructure carrying Russian oil to European markets.
Ukraine’s leaders regard the country’s growing long-range strike potential as an important factor in efforts to force Russia to end its invasion and come to the negotiating table. During the early months of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine had only a very limited number of drones capable of reaching targets inside Russia. Over the past three and a half years, Kyiv’s long-range arsenal has expanded dramatically, making it possible to launch increasingly ambitious air offensives.
The latest addition to Ukraine’s arsenal is a domestically produced long-range cruise missile dubbed the “Flamingo.” This recently unveiled missile has a reported range of over 3000 kilometers and carries a massive warhead that dwarfs anything Ukraine’s long-range drones are currently capable of delivering. Zelenskyy recently confirmed that the missile has undergone successful testing and should enter mass production by the end of the current year.
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Ukraine’s ability to establish domestic cruise missile production should come as no surprise. The country had earlier played a central role in the Soviet missile program, with Ukrainian city Dnipro known informally throughout the Cold War as “Rocket City.”
The revival of this tradition now gives Kyiv a potential trump card in talks with Moscow. Even with the country’s current limited domestic drone and missile capabilities, Ukraine is already proving itself capable of inflicting serious damage on Russia’s economically vital energy sector. If Kyiv reaches its goal of mass produced long-range cruise missiles, the consequences for Russia’s refineries, ports, and pipelines could be catastrophic.
Ukraine’s accelerating deep strikes come at a time when the dominance of drones is making battlefield breakthroughs increasingly difficult to achieve. While the Russian army continues to grind forward in eastern Ukraine, it is advancing at glacial pace and has managed to capture less than one percent of Ukrainian territory in the past one thousand days while losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
The current technological realities of the war clearly favor the defenders. This leaves no obvious pathway toward a decisive Russian military victory in Ukraine. Kyiv policymakers are hoping that if Putin is confronted with a bloody stalemate in Ukraine and the prospect of mounting attacks inside Russia, he may be forced to rethink his current uncompromising stance and seek a settlement to end the invasion.
Historically, Russia’s sheer size has always been considered one of its main strengths. By launching waves of airstrikes across the country, Ukraine now intends to exploit this vastness and transform it into Russia’s greatest weakness. The Kremlin simply does not have enough air defense systems to protect thousands of potential military and energy targets spread across eleven time zones. The only question is whether Ukraine can produce drones and missiles in sufficient quantities to destroy Putin’s war machine. Based on the current trajectory, there is certainly cause for concern in the Kremlin.
David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.
The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the , its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
Image: A satellite image shows smoke erupting from the Kavkazskaya depot following a Ukrainian drone attack, according to the Russian authorities, in Kavkazskaya, Krasnodar Region, Russia, March 23, 2025. (2025 Planet Labs PBC/Handout via REUTERS)
