Ukraine is changing its long-range drone attack strategy against Russian refineries. It is shifting from destroying storage tanks to spark massive fires to focusing on core equipment whose replacement and repairs take a long time, with the aim of prolonging refinery shutdowns.
According to the Financial Times (FT) on the 30th (local time), Ukrainian forces have recently been prioritizing as targets the pipes, chimneys, and equipment joints—core devices essential to refining processes—inside Russian refineries. The goal is to paralyze key refining equipment and halt operations across entire plants for an extended period. Because replacing and repairing core equipment can take months, this approach is seen as a way to inflict long-term damage on Russia's refining capacity.
In practice, before carrying out these operations, Ukrainian drone units are said to receive briefings from energy engineers and industry experts on refinery layouts and the importance of each piece of equipment. They then analyze which equipment is indispensable for plant operations and which will take the longest to replace, and select strike points accordingly.
In particular, the fact that Russia and Ukraine share similar energy systems designed in the Soviet era is cited as a reason Ukraine can carry out precision strikes in this campaign. Ukrainian technical teams have a relatively detailed grasp of Russian refinery processes, equipment placement, and vulnerabilities.
Ukraine views Russia's energy infrastructure not as individual facilities but as a single connected system. It analyzes dependencies among refineries, substations, and transmission networks to find critical points where relatively small explosives can shut down entire plants—an approach known as "systemic warfare."
More recently, Ukraine has also been using a strategy of repeatedly striking the same core equipment before repairs are complete or immediately after restart. Previously, after a single strike on a facility, Russia often restored operations once repairs were done, but now the focus is on repeatedly hitting the same key equipment to block normalization altogether.
An FT analysis of refinery layouts, satellite imagery, and thermal infrared data found that damage to major Russian refineries lasted from weeks to months. In particular, Ukraine's attacks shut down more than 30% of Russia's refining capacity based on actual operations (more than 45% on a nominal basis), leaving Russia with its most severe fuel shortage since the Soviet collapse.
A prime example is the Tuapse refinery on the Black Sea coast. In April, a drone attack destroyed more than 12 large and medium storage tanks with a total capacity of about 80,000 cubic meters, and secondary processing units that convert heavy oil into diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline were also assessed to be damaged.
At the Omsk refinery, about 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, equipment that removes salt and moisture from crude oil before refining was attacked. Because this equipment handles early-stage refining, any damage inevitably affects a significant portion of crude processing capacity. Russian securities firm Finam estimated that repairs to such core equipment typically take up to several months.
Ukraine is using information provided by the United States and France to analyze the deployment of Russia's air defenses and drone infiltration routes. It is also conducting operations to clear Russian air defenses, radars, and electronic warfare equipment to secure drone entry corridors. Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, said, "The goal is clear. We will cut off oil trading, the source of Putin's war funds, and destroy the defense industrial base that supplies weapons to the occupying Russian forces," adding, "It is inevitable that we will escalate our attacks until the enemy's fuel and energy sector and defense industrial base are completely destroyed."