Ukraine announced Thursday that its long-range drones attacked a major offshore oil platform in the Caspian Sea this week. The undisclosed mission signals an intensification of the campaign to cut off Russian energy revenues that fund the war, and a new expansion of the list of targets.
“This is Ukraine’s first attack on Russian infrastructure related to oil production in the Caspian Sea,” a Ukrainian security official told CNN, adding it “reminds Russia once again that all its companies working for the war effort are legitimate targets.” The Filanovsky oil platform, owned by Lukoil, claims to be the largest oil field in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea. CNN has contacted Lukoil and the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.
Ukraine’s full-scale strike campaign against Russian energy facilities began in earnest in early 2024, but since early August Kiev has escalated its efforts, doubling down on what Ukraine sanctions chairman Vladislav Vlasiuk called “long-term sanctions” targeting Russia’s largest financial lifeline. Ukraine is now attacking an increasingly wide range of targets, including not only refineries but also oil and gas export infrastructure, pipelines, tankers, and even offshore drilling infrastructure.
November saw the highest number of attacks in a single month on record, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Project and analysis by CNN.
It reaches a critical juncture in the war. Recent US-led peace efforts only seem to strengthen Russia’s extremist demands, and Russian forces are creeping up on some front-line areas. This, along with a global oil glut cushioning markets against potential price increases, means that Ukraine’s Western allies are increasingly supporting the campaign.
“I think the prevailing strategy since the summer is that we can’t let Russia retain much of the critical energy revenue that fuels the enormous recruiting advantage that Russia has over Ukraine,” said Helima Croft, global head of product strategy at RBC Capital Markets, referring to Russia’s ability to pay high salaries and signing bonuses to recruit soldiers.
“So I think closing down energy ATMs is a more systemic effort.”
According to ACLED, between the beginning of August and the end of November, Ukraine attacked at least 77 Russian energy facilities, almost double the total in the first seven months of this year. At least 14 attacks on refineries and four attacks on Russian export terminals were recorded in November.
Attacking the same facility multiple times is now an important part of strategy. For example, the Rosneft-owned Saratov refinery has been attacked at least eight times since early August, four of them in November.
“What used to be occasional strikes aimed at causing damage has become an ongoing effort to prevent the refinery from fully stabilizing,” Nikhil Dubey, senior refining analyst at data and analytics firm Kpler, said in early December.
Dubey’s research found that repeated strikes against Russian refineries like Saratov have shut down a significant amount of production capacity and “slowed down any repairs.” He also assessed that since August, Kiev has been trying to maximize the impact of the refinery strike by targeting “important blockages in the refining system that produces the final fuel, not just the visible parts of the refinery.”
Sergei Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center, a Berlin-based think tank who spent 25 years in Russia’s oil and gas industry, told CNN he believes the upfront damage inflicted by Ukraine has so far been manageable for Moscow, but that doesn’t take into account the long-term damage from the massive fires these attacks tend to cause.
“Metals don’t particularly like such treatments, and no one knows how many cycles of heating and cooling these columns will last,” he told CNN.
The pattern of attacks suggests that Ukraine is no longer trying to limit its influence to Russia’s domestic energy market. Since August, there has been a noticeable increase in strikes against Russian oil export facilities.
The ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse on the Black Sea and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea were each attacked several times. And the pipeline is also active. The Druzhba pipeline, which transports Russian crude oil to the few remaining EU countries that depend on it, has been attacked five times since August, sparking protests in Hungary, which maintains good relations with the Kremlin.
In late November, the Caspian Sea Pipeline Consortium, which transports 80% of Kazakhstan’s total oil supplies from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea, announced it had been attacked twice in four days.
The pipeline company, jointly owned by Russia, Kazakhstan and international oil companies including Exxon (XOM), Chevron (CVX) and Eni, said the second attack destroyed one of the tanker’s three mooring points. Ukraine has never officially claimed responsibility for the attack.
The entire terminal was shut down for two days, said Homayoun Farakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler. Kazakhstan’s foreign minister called this an “act that undermines bilateral relations between the Republic of Kazakhstan and Ukraine.”
Vakulenko believes this illustrates the risks of this growing campaign. “Ukraine probably wants to incite fear and pay a lot of money for oil tankers entering the Black Sea,” he said, but added: “I don’t think Ukraine will get any sympathy for this and it may incur some costs.”
Ukraine is undaunted. On Wednesday, it carried out a third attack on another key link in Russia’s oil supply chain: the ships that transport oil to global markets. Ukrainian security officials claimed that a maritime drone was used to attack a sanctioned oil tanker heading to Novorossiysk in the Black Sea.
The first two attacks on tankers in late November prompted an extraordinary reaction from President Vladimir Putin, who called them “acts of piracy” and Turkey summoned the ambassadors of both Ukraine and Russia to protest.
“The only way to stop this war of survival is to cut off the flow of funds to Russia,” said Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center in Kiev. The fact that these sanctioned vessels were even there in the first place clearly shows that Western sanctions are insufficient, he argued. “So guys, if you can’t meet your sanctions, maybe someone can help you,” he said.
Two external factors have allowed Ukraine to step up its energy offensive in recent months. First, there was a dramatic reversal in the United States.
“It is very difficult, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking the aggressor’s country,” President Trump wrote in Truth Social in late August. In October, two sources told CNN that the United States had stepped up intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the failed Alaska meeting between President Trump and President Putin, focusing on Russia’s domestic energy goals and hoping to get Russia back to the negotiating table.
Europe was also participating. “By the end of the summer, no one there will even be saying that Ukraine should refrain from attacking any targets,” Lithuanian parliamentarian Dovile Shakarienė, who served as Lithuanian defense minister until October, said in written comments to CNN. “It also helped that there was a growing awareness among Europeans that failure in Ukraine within a standard parliamentary term had a direct impact on our security,” she added.
“The United States remains an active partner when it comes to Ukraine’s barrage of strikes against Russian energy targets, while our European allies are also increasing their involvement,” an official with Ukraine’s drone program told CNN.
The second major tailwind for Ukraine is falling oil prices due to global oversupply.
RBC Capital Markets’ Croft said that with oil prices high, it was hard to imagine that “the Trump administration, which has been so focused on lowering retail gasoline prices, would be so supportive of Russia’s energy attack on Ukraine.”
Western intelligence sources told CNN that Ukraine is receiving additional support for the operation “as needed” and that “the goal is for these attacks to have consequences.” The global oil market can “accept it”, the official added.
How long can Russia endure this?
Russia has made no concessions in peace talks, while its oil sector, the biggest financial pillar of the war, is far more unstable than it was a year ago.
Russian refineries are processing about 6% less oil than this time last year, said Kpler analyst Dubey. While this number may seem small, it is devastating for the Russians because “they usually operate on a small surplus of gasoline,” Dubey said.
In September and October of this year, videos of cars lining up outside gas stations were leaked online, and the Russian government, facing gasoline shortages in some regions, moved to ban gasoline exports until the end of the year. In late November, President Putin signed a law allowing Russian companies to receive subsidies for refining oil at Belarusian refineries and importing it into Russia, a move aimed at stabilizing the domestic market, state media said.
The escalation of attacks in Ukraine coincided with the first new sanctions imposed on Russia by President Trump since returning to office in January. In October, President Trump announced sweeping sanctions against Russia’s largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.
Russia’s Urals crude oil prices have since gradually fallen, dropping to near their lowest point so far during the war, adding to the decline in Russia’s oil export revenues, which reached their lowest point since February 2022, according to the International Energy Agency and data from Argus Media. In November, state media reported that Russia’s oil and gas revenues had fallen by about 34% compared to the same month last year.
Vakulenko believes attacks on Russian energy facilities are just “one piece of the puzzle” in how to pressure Putin to seek peace.
“I think the amount of economic damage that would have to be done to Russia is probably more than Ukraine can generate at this point,” he said. “I believe that if the pressure increases, Russia could probably survive on half of its oil and gas exports.”
For Croft, it’s a question of whether Ukraine and its allies can stay the course.
“I think a combination of an infrastructure attack focused on export targets and the persistence of sanctions thwarting could potentially bring Russia back to the table, but that would have to be a longer-term event,” she said.
President Trump is now pressuring Ukraine to accept concessions, which may test his desire to do both.
