The lid of an oil storage tank, a huge disc, rose above the city on a cushion of black smoke and flame. The Independent opened its account of Ukraine’s drone campaign with that image: a Moscow refinery hit for the second time in three days, during Kyiv’s largest attack on the capital.
On Sunday, Vladimir Putin conceded that Russia has “problems” in the war and warned of fuel shortages caused by Ukrainian strikes. “Yes, we see the problems, we are aware of them and are responding to them,” he told United Russia party members, “but we will certainly ensure the security of both the country and our citizens, as well as the inviolability of Russia’s borders.”
From 630 kilometers to 1,750
Ukraine’s defense ministry said in 2022 that it could hit targets about 630km away, roughly Kyiv to Tula. This year it says its long-range weapons are reaching “about a distance of 1,750km.”
Russia began the war with the edge. It held stockpiles of ballistic missiles and, from summer 2022, Iranian-made Shahed drones that can travel up to 2,000km with a 50kg warhead. Allies hesitated to hand Ukraine long-range weapons, so Kyiv built its own industry. Fire Point, maker of the FP-1 attack drone and the Flamingo cruise missile, now plans a European missile defense system, and the Pentagon is said to be weighing purchases of Ukrainian drones and electronic warfare systems.
The Baker Institute says Ukraine lacked the means for sustained, long-range strikes as late as 2025. Gabriel Collins of the institute put it this way: before the invasion, hitting targets 1,000 or more kilometers inside an adversary with capable air defenses was a domain where perhaps “only the US, Israel, China, and Russia” had the means. He said Ukraine’s wartime industry can now credibly threaten infrastructure up to 2,000 km from its borders.
What the strikes have cost Russia
Analysts estimate more than a fifth of Russia’s refining capacity may already be offline. The International Energy Agency reported that Russian crude output fell about 5 per cent year-on-year in the latest month to 8.7m barrels per day. “This level of disruption is unprecedented in the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” the agency said in its June report.
Grégoire Roos of Chatham House called the Moscow refinery attack “the most interesting development over the past year” in comments to CNBC. Energy revenues, he noted, are worth around 23 per cent of the federal budget and about 20 per cent of GDP. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that Russia’s export revenues from oil, gas, coal and refined products totalled 193 billion euros in the 12 months to February 24, 2026, down 27 per cent from the pre-invasion comparison period.
Prices have moved as well. Gasoline that cost around $0.65 per litre before the invasion cost $0.95 in May, and inflation is officially 5.6 per cent. Purchase restrictions have been imposed in the central region, blamed on “temporary logistical difficulties,” and similar problems are reported in the south and west. Video of cars queuing for petrol floods social media in occupied Crimea.
In Omsk oblast, about 2,400km from the front line, a ban on filling containers began late on Monday. One resident told local outlet NGS55: “I don’t have a car; I used to ask my neighbor to buy me [gasoline] in a canister. Now I’m supposed to cut firewood with a hacksaw? Mow the grass with a mower? We’ve come to this. Beyond words.”
