Ukraine's Drones And Missiles Hit Russia Where It Hurts: The $189-Billion Oil Industry

Forbes

26-03-2025

A Ukrainian attack drone prepares to launch.
Unmanned Systems Forces photo
Back in August, workers broke ground for a new drone factory in Oryol Oblast, in western Russia 100 miles from the Ukrainian border. Four months later, the factory was ready to churn out Shahed one-way attack drones, one of Russia's main munitions for bombarding Ukrainian cities.
But Ukrainian intelligence was watching. And on Dec. 26, Ukrainian air force Sukhoi Su-24 bombers flung several British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles at the factory. 'As a result of the strike, a storage, maintenance and repair facility for Shahed kamikaze drones, consisting of several reinforced concrete shelters, was destroyed,' the Ukrainian general staff reported.
A follow-up attack on Jan. 26 compounded the damage. In total, at least 200 Shaheds burned.
But does it really matter? Russian factories produce nearly 1,000 Shaheds a month, each ranging farther than 900 miles with a 110-pound warhead. In destroying 200 drones, the Ukrainians may have slightly reduced the pace of Russia's attacks on Ukrainian cities for a few weeks or months.
Overall, Ukraine's campaign of deep strikes targeting munitions depots and factories hundreds of miles inside Russia has yielded mixed results.
Yes, they may have offered some relief to bombarded civilians. More broadly, however, 'air-launched cruise missiles were often out of sequence with combat operations,' explained Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.
Sure, the Oryol raids may have spared a few Ukrainians, but they and other deep strikes on the most explosive targets—even the most visually impressive ones that produce towering fireballs and dramatic videos that circulate on social media—haven't altered the fundamental problem facing Ukrainian and Russian forces.
'Both sides struggled to overcome a prepared defense,' Kofman observed. While deep strikes may have 'shaping effects on enemy forces,' Ukrainian brigades are 'often not in a position to capitalize on them.'
It isn't particularly helpful for the Ukrainian air force to blow up, say, a Russian field army's entire stock of heavy mortar rounds if the adjacent Ukrainian army corps is boxed in by minefields or lacks the manpower to mount an offensive and exploit the dip in the Russians' short-term ammunition stocks.
Ukrainian Su-24s launch Storm Shadows.
Ukrainian air force capture
In that sense, a major part of Ukraine's deep strike campaign—the raids targeting military supply—is impressive but far from decisive. According to Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight, more than half of the observed Ukrainian strikes between September and February 'had limited impact.'
Drones and missiles may have struck a few Russian factories and depots and triggered a few frightening blazes, but firefighters eventually extinguished the flames and workers eventually rebuilt. All the while, Ukrainian forces were still incrementally losing ground in eastern Ukraine.
Attacking more often, and with heavier munitions, might inflict lasting damage. But Ukraine doesn't get enough of the best foreign-made deep-strike munitions to mount a sustained and intensive campaign on Russian logistics. And it doesn't yet build enough similar munitions on its own.
It's not for no reason that, in recent months, Ukrainian strike planners have shifted their aim—and are now mounting more raids targeting Russian oil infrastructure. And not just any oil infrastructure, but refineries in particular: the beating chemical hearts of the Russian economy ... and any war effort that economy sustains.
'As these are more technically complex and expensive structures, their importance for the Russian oil refining industry and exports of oil products is also higher, and they are more difficult and expensive to restore,' Frontelligence Insight explained.
Recent raids on refineries have cost Russia between $658 million and $863 million, Frontelligence Insight estimated. But Russia's total revenue from oil exports in 2024 was $189 billion. So far, the oil attacks are also too infrequent and insufficiently destructive to inflict the kind of economic damage that could alter the course of Russia's 37-month wider war on Ukraine.
That could change. 'To enhance the effect of the strikes, Ukrainian troops should conduct regular attacks on large unique cracking units at modern Russian refineries,' Frontelligence Insight advised, citing economist Vladimir Milov.
The cracking units, which break down crude oil into useful products, are delicate and complex and extremely difficult for Russian industry to replace under the current sanctions regime.
Frequent and precise strikes might prevent them from being repaired, Milov told the analysis group. Maybe that would accomplish what the deep strikes on munitions depots haven't accomplished—and hurt Russia badly enough to end the war on terms that favor Ukraine.