The verified record first. By the Caspian Policy Center’s tally, published March 18, 2025, Ukrainian drones had struck Russian oil refineries 61 times across 24 facilities since January 2024, and at least 40 of those strikes caused fires or lasting damage. The same count logged many additional hits on storage depots and pumping stations. Its final entry, a strike on March 16 against Moscow’s largest refinery, put half of the capital’s fuel supply at risk, the center wrote.
The market context, figures show, is measurable. Analysts at Reuters, working from oil industry trading figures covering January to early February 2025, calculated that Ukrainian drone attacks had disabled roughly 10 percent of Russia’s refining capacity, with at least eight refineries significantly damaged since the start of that year, alongside depots, pumping stations and export terminals for oil and gas shipments. The Atlantic Council, relaying that analysis, added that this damage, together with United States sanctions on the Kremlin’s tanker shadow fleet, was expected to leave Moscow with little option but to slow oil output.
According to the Caspian Policy Center, the campaign had by then pushed refined output to a 12-year low, and Russian seaborne oil exports fell nearly 10 percent over 2024. Repairs, the center noted, demanded time, money and specialized equipment often produced in Western countries, and repaired facilities were in some cases struck again. Ukrainian officials have been open about the logic: the oil and gas sector serves as the economic engine of the Kremlin’s war effort.
The military-technical lane is part of the same record. Restricted in the use of Western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes, Ukraine prioritized domestic drone and missile production; officials stated an aim of manufacturing 30,000 long-range drones and three thousand missiles during 2025. President Vladimir Putin, for his part, warned in September 2024 that lifting the restrictions on long-range strikes would mean, in his words, that NATO and Russia were “at war”.
The framing, plainly stated, is retrospective. The two published analyses date to February and March 2025, and the figures here are figures as they stood then, not a claim about the campaign’s present state. What the record through early 2025 does show is a methodical air offensive against energy infrastructure, credited with measurable refining and export losses and aimed, in the Atlantic Council’s assessment, at disrupting the energy industry, stretching the Kremlin’s limited air defenses and undermining the business-as-usual climate in Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, showcasing new domestically produced missiles late in 2024 and calling them “arguments for a just peace” in his New Year address, left little doubt that the arsenal was meant as leverage.
Sources
- Map: Ukrainian Drone Strikes on Russian Oil Refineries
- Ukrainian drones reportedly knock out 10 percent of Russian refining capacity – Atlantic Council
