Ukrainian drones target Russian oil sites as Iran conflict offsets gains

Ukraine has sustained a long-range drone offensive against Russian oil refineries, export terminals and pumping stations — reaching targets more than 1,500 kilometers from the front lines — in a bid to cut off the revenues funding Moscow's war machine, The Korea Times reported Friday.

The campaign aims to accomplish through military force what international sanctions have only partially achieved: throttling Russia's oil export income. Yet rising global energy prices linked to the Iran conflict have helped Moscow recoup much of the financial damage, analysts say.

Ukrainian drones have struck the Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea four times in just over two weeks, sparking fires and forcing evacuations, according to The Korea Times. Following an April 18 attack, Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev of the Krasnodar region posted a video in which an emergency official said "boiling oil products had spilled onto the street, damaging cars."

Ukraine also hit the Ust-Luga export terminal near the Baltic Sea — about 800 kilometers from Ukrainian territory — three times in late March, and struck a pumping station in the Perm region, roughly 1,500 kilometers away, on two consecutive days in late April.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that "Russia has lost at least $7 billion since the start of the year as a direct result of attacks on its oil sector."

Despite those losses, Russia's crude and oil product exports rose 320,000 barrels per day in March, with revenues nearly doubling from $9.7 billion to $19 billion as the Iran conflict pushed global energy prices sharply higher. Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd., said "U.S. action against Iran has saved both the Russian oil sector and the federal budget from a crisis that was clearly developing in late February."

The strikes have also produced severe environmental damage near the targeted facilities. Residents reported "black rain" — oily droplets falling from the sky — and benzene levels, a known carcinogen, were recorded at hazardous concentrations during the fires. Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ecodefense, warned: "There is a lot of oil in the sea. In the next few years, every storm will be bringing more oil pollution onto the coast."

Marcel Plichta, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the University of St. Andrews, told The Korea Times the drone campaign has been "a very successful case of leveraging simple technologies and domestically assembled technology to attack Russia in places that, at the start of the war, they just would have never expected to be attacked."

Ukraine's drone range has more than doubled since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, enabling Kyiv to strike oil infrastructure that was once considered safely beyond reach.