Ukraine should focus on hitting Russian oil infrastructure

On Friday I sent out a piece entitled “The US does not understand air power, does Ukraine?” It caused a little stir. People have called it the anti-Wildberries campaign, which I suppose is partly right. However, the key thing was that it called for focus in airpower and argued that signaling (showing capabilities) is usually a failure and that the best way to use airpower is to deconstruct strategic systems that underpin warfighting.

The article made the point that Ukraine needed to focus continually on Russia’s fuel system (refineries, pipelines, shipping) and that campaigns against Wildberries and the like often have much less strategic effect than understood (in that they do not damage warfighting potential).

This past week there were a number of examples and arguments about just how vulnerable Russia’s fuel system happens to be and it makes sense to lead on that.

In other Ukraine War news updates, the last piece of the Trump con that started in early July came apart this week, when it was reported that Trump had actually blocked Starlink from helping Ukraine in its campaign to attack Russian communications. Now, as it was a con, this was always going to happen, and it finally was confirmed. What that means, of course, is that the real winner from all this, Vladimir Putin, got more time. In the end, however, there was one glimmer of hope – Ukraine attacked what it wanted to regardless, and might have had success.

Lastly a brief update on the Fedorov situation. The former defense minister rather controversially called for Ukrainian elections last week – a sign that he knows he is not coming back under Zelensky. It was controversial. 

Focus on Russian oil infrastructure

On August 21/22 the Ukrainians hit the Russian Novokuibyshevskyi oil refinery in Samara Oblast. The facility is about 1000 miles from Ukraine. This attack came just one day after the Ukrainians attacked another major refinery in Perm, which is also about 1000 miles from Ukraine. 

It is an indication of a recent uptick and return to refinery attacks, which is sometimes overlooked in the discussion of the Wildberries campaign, etc. 

However, as this week showed, not so much in these attacks but in some other data that have been emerging, the campaign on Russia’s oil infrastructure is beginning to have strategic effect. If Ukraine can keep it up, expand it and hit the same targets multiple times (either preventing repair or degrading quick repairs) Russia’s oil system could head towards failure. 

Almost two and a half years ago (yikes, has it been so long?) I summarized both the advantages and challenges of such a campaign against Russian fuel, showing that the key thing was not flashy one-off attacks, but repeated attacks to stop repairs and reconstitution.

Here is a summary from that piece.

In other words, don’t get fooled by dramatic pictures. An oil production system can be repaired and slack in the system can be made up for what is temporarily lost in other areas. That’s why I harp on stocks above. Ukraine has to keep this up for a while and attack (and re-attack) numerous facilities for this to work. It is not easy.

Now, the issue Ukraine has faced is from that point it has not consistently and repeatedly hit the same refineries to put them out of action for good. It has ramped up the campaign and then ramped down the campaign, hit new refineries but then, frustratingly, seemed to forget about other refineries that it had hit earlier.

Finally in the last few months, the Ukrainians have started doing what needs to be done. Here is a chart from Bloomberg data that I included in the Friday piece.

Now the attack rate is still not ideal. There was a severe and regrettable decline in attacks on refineries for two months in the Spring of 2026, but the focus on the whole oil infrastructure system is now clearer and the refineries, pipelines and port attacks are starting to cause a buckling of the system.

When it comes to the refineries, as I tried to say a few years ago, the repeat attacks are finally eating away at Russia’s ability to repair these facilities. Here is a chart I put together of attacks on Russia’s largest 11 refineries this year. I have checked the data, but some of them come solely from Ukrainian sources (which have been reliable, but I wanted to point that out). 

CDU is the central distillation unit – the cracking tank – and if you want to know more about the importance of hitting certain vital parts of a refinery, this piece laid that out almost two years ago, but could be a helpful refresher.

What seems to be happening, finally, is that Russia’s ability to keep repairing these facilities is losing its integrity. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who ran the largest of Russia’s oil companies before Putin forced him out, put together this fascinating thread on what might be going on in Russia’s fuel system and the problems with repair. In a nutshell, the Russians are trying to get by with constant, short term repairs, or patching. However that can only get them so far, and at some point the system will start to fail. When that happens, the results will be pretty dramatic. Here is most of the thread.

This recent pick up in attacks is once again leading to a Russian rationing crisis for fuel. Here is how that has progressed over the last few months looking at numbers of Russian regions with rationing of some sort.

Here is the Meduza article with the most recent update and examples of how this situation is spreading. 

Now this is hitting Russian income and that could get much worse. With refinery coming offline, Russia has had to switch to exporting crude (it must keep all the refined fuels for its own consumption) and even having to purchase refined fuels from the world market and import them into Russia. 

Add a port campaign

So it is exporting less profitable fuel and having to spend desperately needed capital importing fuel from the outside. Now, Trump’s War with Iran has provided a cushion for Putin by keeping the prices for crude very high, meaning that states like India and China are buying whatever Russia can sell.

However if the refining campaign can be joined by an equally effective port campaign (remember, the USA is putting pressure on Ukraine to keep oil flowing out of Russian ports) then even this will not work – and Russia’s financial crisis will hit a death spiral. It will have to import expensive refined fuels and be able to ship out much less crude.

This is why this campaign is so important. It is not because it affects Russian morale, or causes inconvenience, it is because ultimately it is the best way to take away the one thing all war machines need—money. Russia without the ability to raise money by exporting fuel is not only not a great power, it is not a medium economic power. It is an economic basket case.

That is why this fuel system should be the focus.

Note: That does not mean the only thing attacked, just always the highest priority. After that I would put communications, armaments production and strategic transport. However going through all this would require another piece. 

Trump con comes to natural conclusion, more time for Putin

Guess what? After all that waiting it turns out that Trump decided not to help Ukraine by pushing Elon Musk to let the Ukrainians have Starlink access to attack strategic targets in Russia. The FT had a story on that development this week, which has been summarized in other outlets like this. 

This was the second part of the Trump con that has gone on this summer.

The first part, which fell apart a few weeks ago, was that he was going to grant Ukraine a license to build Patriot interceptors. This was all part of the extremely misleading reporting that saturated the press in late July, that Trump was “warming” toward Ukraine, that Trump was so impressed by Ukrainian resolve that he was going to help them, that he was, finally, going to hammer Putin.

Of course none of it was ever true, and the press has moved on after embarrassing itself by writing the same, wrong, stories on the subject. However, here we are, almost two months after the con started and absolutely nothing has changed. No Starlink help for Ukraine, no Patriot licenses, no new large supply of Patriot interceptors – and no prospect of Ukraine getting any of this.

Now this con was brutally effective for Putin. The Ukrainians actually believed there was a real possibility of Trump giving them both Starlink access and Patriot interceptors and a license. They worked for a long time preparing their pitch, put together plans in case they were successful, and invested a good deal of emotional and political energy into their efforts.

And here we are almost two months later and it did not happen, but it should be clear by now that it was never going to happen. They were just, as they have been for the last 19 months, being strung along.

And the beneficiary is the Russians. All this means is we have had two more months of blue smoke and mirrors, with people wondering if Trump might help the Ukrainians, and in the meantime Russia can bombard an almost defenseless Ukraine. This week, for instance, it was reported that Ukraine had “run dry” of Patriot Interceptors.

The effects of being defenseless to Russian (and North Korean) ballistic missiles, which is what this means, is now crystal clear and getting worse by the week. Ukrainian civilian casualties are trending steadily upward as the Russians can launch mass attacks knowing some of their missiles will definitely get through and other systems can therefore deal with overwhelmed Ukrainian air defenses. This was how Ukraine’s foreign minister summarized the situation for July 2026:

In July alone, Russia killed at least 437 civilians and injured 2,610 across Ukraine — the highest monthly civilian toll since May 2022. 17 children were killed and another 166 injured, the highest monthly number of child casualties since April 2022.

Having more time to do this is Putin’s key objective – which is why the con is so devastating. Most importantly for the Russians, Putin wants to have all the winter of 2026-2027 to bombard a defenseless Ukraine – to make last winter’s terrible bombardment, with its heat and power outages, seem mild by comparison. This is now being admitted by Ukrainians. This week, Serhii Kyslytsia, first deputy head of Zelensky’s Presidential Office, was quoted as saying. 

Putin has no desire whatsoever to sit down at the negotiating table now, and after winter begins and until it ends, that is, at least until mid-March, he will have even less motivation. Because he believes that Ukrainians are not strong enough as a nation to survive this winter.

This is why it is vital to call what we are seeing, and have always seen, as a Trump “con.” It is why, for months, I have trying to communicate that this is all about leaving Ukraine as exposed and vulnerable as possible in the upcoming winter. Now, the Ukrainians are admitting that publicly itself. And that is why I wrote two days after the Patriot license con was announced that all that was really happening was that Ukraine was being set up to have the crap kicked out of it this winter. Here is a quote from that piece. 

The fact that Russia seems to be upping its strike rate with three attacks on Kyiv in six days, just as it is clear that Ukraine is running out of Patriots interceptors, shows how the Russians are aware of the help Trump has provided and will continue to provide for them. For at least a year, if not longer, they can do a great deal of damage with their ballistic missiles knowing that the Ukrainians have few options to shoot them down. That is a massive strategic gift that the USA has given to Russia. Trump has provided Putin at least one more whole winter, and possibly two or three (the Japanese after many years of licensing are only making 30 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, the ones Ukraine needs, annually), to attack what he wants.

In other words, it is not harmless optimism to act like Trump might help Ukraine, it is falling for a deadly, pro-Putin maneuver that is leading, and will increasingly lead, to Ukrainian suffering. 

And it delays Ukraine doing what it should and restrains Europeans from doing what they could. We had one example last week. One of the reasons the Ukrainians were desperate to get Trump to give them Starlink access was because they wanted to attack a new Russian sattellite that is about to go into operations and could give the Russians much greater accuracy within Ukraine (where they do not have Starlink). They believed that they needed Starlink to do this effectively.

Actually, they might have been wrong on this. A week ago, probably understanding that US aid was not going to be forthcoming, the Ukrainians attacked and seem to have heavily damaged the facility being prepared to deploy this new Russian system.

The Ukrainians must stop investing any hope and effort in getting Trump to support them. They must stop falling for the con, and the Western press should at least stop pretending the con is not happening, to help them make that choice. 

Fedorov Calls For Ukrainian Elections

For now the situation with Mykhailo Fedorov, the one time and excellent Ukrainian defense minister, seems to have reached a new equilibrium. The Ukrainian parliament (Rada) has approved Yevhenii Khmara as his replacement. So legally we have a successor and for now Zelensky seems determined to keep Fedorov away from power. That seems unlikely to change for a while. 

Fedorov is obviously frustrated and lasst week, while his replacement was being confirmed, made an audacious, and probably misconceived political gambit. He called, in a Youtube video, for a new Ukrainian election.

While I can understand his frustration, it was, from what I am hearing from Ukrainians I trust, a major mistake. An election is not going to happen now, not least because Ukraine cannot protect itself from Russian missiles, which would make any campaign a possible death trap. Moreover, Ukrainians do not want an election until and unless there is a lengthy stop in the fighting that will allow for a real campaign. Even some of Fedorov’s supporters were surprised, therefore, that he made this move. 

So two things can be true. Fedorov can still be an excellent defense minister (and Ukraine would benefit from having him in post) and it can still be a major mistake of his to call for elections. 

The one upshot of this is that, for now, the issue is settled. He is not coming back.

Phillips O’Brien is a pr0fessor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrew. This article originally appeared on his substack Phillips’s Newsletter. It is republished with permission.