The rise of Ukrainian oil refinery attacks stretches the shortages of Russian fuel

Ukraine has considerably increased the number of attacks launched against Russian oil refineries in recent months, arousing fuel shortages and price increases in certain parts of the country, the BBC Verify and the BBC Russian have found.

Drone strikes on refineries – some at the bottom of Russia – soaked in August and remained high in September, an analysis of Russian media reports and verified images have shown.

Some 28 of the country’s 38 major refineries – where crude oil is converted into fuel usable as petrol and diesel – have been affected since January, with successful attacks already 48% higher than the set of 2024.

Ordinary Russians seem to feel the impact of strikes, with verified videos showing long queues in service stations. Some garages suspended operations to “wait for the crisis” rather than working at a loss, said a manager at Russian Media.

The Ukraine security service, the SBU, has not responded to a request for comments. But President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia’s oil industry damage is a key to forcing Russia at the negotiating table.

“The most effective sanctions – those that work the fastest – are the fires of Russia’s oil refineries, its terminals, its oil depots,” said the Ukrainian chief in a September address. “We have considerably restricted the oil industry of Russia, which considerably restricts war.”

Our analysis shows that the reported attacks have reached a record level in August, with 14 refineries targeted by Ukrainian drones and eight in September. This increase came after a brief lull coinciding with a wave of diplomacy, during which President Donald Trump tried to negotiate a cease-fire contract between kyiv and Moscow.

Some strikes have been launched against installations deep in Russia. At the end of September, the SBU managed to reach the refinery of Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat in the Bashkortostan region twice.

The satellite images have shown that smoke escaped from the installation – which is more than 1,100 km (683 miles) from the Ukrainian border – after the attack.

Kyiv also attacked some of the most lucrative facilities in Russia. A refinery near Volgograd has been targeted six times this year – with an attack in August forcing him to stop operations for a month. The large Ryazan factory near Moscow – capable of producing 340,000 barrels per day – has been affected five times since January.

The Ukrainian strikes seem to continue two targets – large essential refineries to civil supplies and those closer to the border used to provide troops fighting in Ukraine, Vladimir Milov, a former Deputy Minister of Energy under Vladimir Putin and now an exiled opposition politician, told BBC Verify.

The Ukraine staff previously said that refineries in Samara and Saratov had been used as part of military logistics operations. The two regions have been struck by drone strikes in recent weeks, with two of the three factories in the Samara region.

Justin Crump, a former army officer and CEO of the Sibylline risk consulting company, told BBC Verify that Ukraine had long targeted the Russia oil and gas industry. But he noted that the wave of strikes has shown that military and security services have now settled on tactics as a “basic campaign”.

“This campaign has obviously been the subject of a significant investment and is carried out by an intelligence assessment of what will harm Russia the most,” said Crump.

It is difficult to measure to what extent strikes have an impact on petrol and diesel production as classified statistics in Russia relating to petrol production in May 2024 in the middle of a previous series of attacks against refineries.

But the analysis of BBC Verify revealed that at least 10 oil refineries have been forced to fully or partially suspend the operations since August, and the reuters news agency reported that certain days, national production had decreased as much as a fifth.

There is evidence that the strikes of the refinery have an impact on civilian life in certain parts of Russia. The videos confirmed by the verification of the BBC showed long queues in the service stations in the Far East and on a highway between Saint Petersburg and Moscow, while the managers prohibited in the Kremlin introduced the rationing of the petrol in occupied Crimea.

The owners of small independent petrol stations in Siberia told Russian media that they had to close due to the problems in progress with the fuel supply. A manager of the Novosibirsk region compared the situation to hyperinflation experienced by post-Soviet Russia.

“In my opinion, we have not had a crisis like this since 1993-1994,” he told Local Outlet Prevent TV. “Many service stations have now suspended their operations. Perhaps it is better to wait for the crisis than to make a loss.”

While Russia has traditionally experienced price increases stimulated by summer trips and the maintenance of oil refineries, drone strikes agitate it.

Retailing petrol prices have increased, while wholesale prices – the cost to which retailers buy from producers – have increased even faster, increasing by 40% since January.

The closely controlled national media suggested that drone strikes are a key factor for shortages, the daily newspaper Kommersant attributing the deficit to “unforeseen refinery closures”.

But civilians in western Russia – including the Moscow and Krasnodar regions – seem to be largely unconceived. Some of those who spoke at the BBC said they were not aware of shortages elsewhere in the country.

Russian officials insisted that the situation remains under control. During a press briefing this week, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “the government took the necessary measures” to face the shortages.

But Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced last week that a partial ban on petrol exports had been extended until the end of 2025. The opposition politician, Mr. Milov, noted that the export suspension was relatively low and “will not save the internal market”.

The extent to which strikes have an impact on Moscow’s ability to use oil revenues to finance his war in Ukraine is not clear.

The vast majority of oil exports in Russia are in the form of unrefined crude oil, which do not seem to have been affected by strikes. An analysis carried out by Bloomberg at the end of September showed that crude oil exports – although less profitable than petrol and diesel – had reached a record.

Mr. Crump observed that the impact of strikes could be reinforced if other “measures” and sanctions targeting oil exports were adopted by the West, but stressed that attacks bound Moscow’s ability to fight war.

“This campaign alone will not carry Russia on knees, but definitively increases the pain of prolonged conflict.”

Additional report by Christine Jeavans.