Tatiana Mitrova
Why Ukraine’s Campaign Against Moscow’s Energy Sector Is Working
Rosneft office building, Moscow, October 2025 Ramil Sitdikov / Reuters
TATIANA MITROVA is a Global Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
SERGEY VAKULENKO is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.More by Sergey Vakulenko
In considering the many effects of the war in Ukraine on the Russian economy, few suspected that fuel shortages would be one of them. After all, Russia is an oil-rich country whose energy infrastructure is far from the frontlines; for most of the war, it has been Ukraine, not Russia, whose energy grid has been in the line of fire. Yet since August, when Ukraine began a concerted campaign to strike oil refineries deep inside Russia, fuel shortages have come to preoccupy Russians. By late October, Ukrainian drones had hit more than half of Russia’s 38 major refineries at least once. As a result, Russia went from processing about 5.4 million barrels of oil per day in July to processing roughly 5 million barrels per day in September. Production outages spread across multiple regions, and some Russian gas stations began rationing fuel. By late October, additional strikes, including at refineries in Ryazan and Saratov, further underscored the reach of Ukraine’s campaign.
With such results, it may be tempting to conclude that Ukraine is on the verge of breaking Russia’s oil industry. But that is not the case. Despite the serious damage they are causing, the attacks are unlikely to change Moscow’s resolve in the near term. For the time being, the Russian refining sector still has enough resilience, because of both its substantial surplus capacity as the world’s third-largest refining system and its ability to repair damaged units quickly. The Russian government also has a variety of tools it can use to maintain a relative equilibrium. Moreover, for Ukraine, there is also the risk that the campaign will cause Moscow to step up its own attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and energy systems as the country enters the fourth winter of the war.
But the attacks on refineries could—if they can be sustained at the current pace—have far-reaching effects over the longer term. As Russian resilience is relentlessly tested, it is gradually being worn out. Although the units used to distill crude oil can be repaired relatively easily after every attack, they erode after the repeated cycles of heating and cooling caused by strikes. And as Russia’s oil industry grows more reliant on government interventions for crisis management, the energy sector will become state-managed and less efficient. In truth, the real damage caused by Ukraine’s campaign is cumulative and institutional, not physical. Even as it strives to preserve short-term stability, Russia is presiding over the acceleration of long-term decline.
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