# REPORT: How Kyiv Is Methodically Draining the Oil That Funds Putin

> On the night of July 11 into July 12, 2026, Ukrainian forces carried out one of their most massive operations against Russian oil logistics since the start of the year.

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Reportage
- Published: 2026-07-20
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/report-how-kyiv-is-methodically-draining-the-oil-that-funds-putin

## Key takeaways

- On July 11-12, 2026, Ukrainian drones reportedly struck 73 targets, including 21 Russian tankers, in the Sea of Azov, per commander Robert Brovdi via the Kyiv Independent.
- Ukraine's General Staff said 42.74% of Russian refining capacity was disabled by early July 2026; independent analysts put the figure closer to a third.
- The July 7 strike on the Omsk refinery, about 2,700 km away, was presented as showing Siberia is within reach.
- Oil prices rose after the Iran war, but Ukrainian strikes reportedly cut export capacity by about 2 million barrels a day, nearly offsetting the gain.
- Crimea faced fuel shortages and a state of emergency, and Putin called the fuel shortage "not critical."

## Introduction: the fuel war Moscow refuses to acknowledge

### 73 strikes in a single night on Russian tankers

On the night of July 11 into July 12, **2026**, Ukrainian forces carried out one of their most massive operations against Russian oil logistics since the start of the year. According to **Robert Brovdi**, commander of Ukraine's uncrewed systems forces, quoted by the **Kyiv Independent**, Ukrainian drones struck 21 Russian **tankers**, four tugboats, two dry cargo ships, and one specialized vessel, totaling 73 successful strikes in a single night in the **Sea of Azov**. Traffic through the **Kerch Strait** was reportedly halted.

This figure, as brutal as it sounds, is not an isolated episode. It fits into a systematic campaign that the **Ukrainian military command** has explicitly justified: these **tankers** serve, in its own words relayed by the **Kyiv Independent**, to "transport oil and oil products while circumventing international sanctions, providing funds to finance the armed aggression against **Ukraine**." The logic is plain: every Russian barrel that finds no buyer is a barrel that will not fund a missile aimed at **Kyiv**.

### An economic war that complements the trench war

This **oil battle** does not replace the ground war in the **Donbas**, it complements it. While soldiers fight street by street in **Kostiantynivka**, Ukrainian drones strike targets sometimes located more than 2,700 kilometers from the **front**, as far as **Siberia**. It is a two-speed war: slow and bloody on the ground, fast and surgical against the financial machinery fueling the Russian war effort.

Ukrainian President **Volodymyr Zelensky** himself described this campaign as "long-range sanctions," according to remarks reported by **Al Jazeera**, a phrase that sums up the strategic intent well: to economically punish **Moscow** where official Western sanctions fail to do so.

*Calling these strikes "long-range sanctions" is a phrase I like because it states the truth bluntly: when diplomats fail to bend Russia's war economy, Ukrainian drones take over the job. I see nothing here but legitimate economic self-defense.*

## The scale of the damage to Russian refineries

### 42.74% of Russian refining capacity disabled

According to the Ukrainian General Staff, quoted by **Al Jazeera** on July 4, 2026, Ukrainian strikes had disabled 42.74% of Russian refining capacity by the start of the month, with eight refineries hit over the preceding month and more than 60 storage tanks destroyed or damaged. Cumulative losses to the Russian oil industry since August 2025 are estimated at $13.5 billion. Independent energy analysts put the functional disruption closer to a third of total capacity, a divergence that reflects how hard it is to precisely measure the real scale of the damage.

Whichever exact figure is used, the order of magnitude remains considerable for a country that remains one of the world's largest oil producers. Losing between a third and nearly half of its refining capacity within a few months constitutes a major economic shock, hard to mask even with the **Kremlin's** most optimistic messaging.

### Omsk, the strike that put Siberia within reach

On July 7, 2026, Ukrainian drones struck the **Omsk** refinery, the largest in **Russia**, located roughly 2,700 kilometers from Ukrainian territory and close to the border with **Kazakhstan**, according to **The Guardian**. Ukrainian defense technology company **Fire Point** said its upgraded **FP-1** drones carried out the strike, calling it a world record for a strike drone. **Zelensky** said in his nightly video address that "**Siberia**, too, is now within reach of Ukrainian precision strikes."

This strike on **Omsk** carries symbolic weight that far outstrips its immediate material impact. It shows that no Russian oil facility, even on the other side of the country, can consider itself definitively out of reach of the Ukrainian arsenal, a deterrence message sent directly to the **Kremlin** and its energy industry.

*A strike 2,700 kilometers from the front completely changes the mental geography of this war. Putin can no longer tell himself that Siberia is an untouchable sanctuary, and that may be the most important lesson from this week of strikes.*

## The price spike that fed, then hurt, Moscow

### The oil price peak linked to the war against Iran

According to **Le Monde**, crude oil prices climbed from $70.71 a barrel on February 27, 2026, to more than $108 on March 26, in the wake of the American-Israeli strikes against **Iran** launched on February 28. This price surge gave **Moscow** an unexpected financial window, just as Western sanctions were being partially eased. It is precisely this window that **Ukraine** chose to close by force rather than let it benefit the Russian war budget.

Oil expert **Thierry Bros**, a professor at **Sciences Po Paris**, quoted by **Le Monde**, explained that the late-March Ukrainian strikes had cut Russian export capacity by roughly 2 million barrels per day, almost exactly neutralizing the effect of the price increase. "**Ukraine** is winning its bet: neutralizing the effect of the price rise," he summarized. It is a clear demonstration of the strategic effectiveness of this targeted strike campaign.

### A Russian budget already under strain before the strikes

According to the **Washington Post**, the Russian federal budget deficit had reached 6 trillion rubles, or about $83 billion, by the end of May 2026, more than double the level of the previous year, even before Russian oil prices fell to $50 a barrel following the ceasefire deal between **Iran** and the **United States**. **Rosneft** chief **Igor Sechin** reportedly described the scale of damage to Russian refineries as "unprecedented" in a letter to **Putin**, revealed by the newspaper **Kommersant**.

This combination of factors, falling global prices and targeted Ukrainian strikes, places the **Kremlin's** war finances in a far more fragile position than official Russian messaging suggests. A country that must amend its budget code to borrow more without going through formal parliamentary approval, as reported by the **Washington Post**, is not a country sailing through this war without real economic cost.

*Every ruble Moscow has to borrow in a hurry to plug its deficit is a ruble that could have funded another strike on Kyiv. This gradual budgetary asphyxiation deserves as much attention as the ground fighting, because it wears Putin down just as surely.*

## Crimea, a testing ground for energy asphyxiation

### A state of emergency declared on the occupied peninsula

According to **CNBC**, **Ukraine** has stepped up its attacks on energy logistics and infrastructure in **Crimea** in recent weeks, causing fuel shortages and pushing occupation authorities to declare a state of emergency on the peninsula. This campaign, which **Kyiv** has nicknamed "Crimean Switch Off" according to the **Kyiv Independent**, aims to methodically cut annexed **Crimea** off from its energy supply lines.

Russian authorities installed on the peninsula have suspended fuel sales to the public, a rarely seen sign even in the areas hardest hit by the war. This extreme measure reflects a genuine shortage rather than a simple administrative precaution, and it illustrates **Crimea's** persistent vulnerability to the Ukrainian strike campaign.

### A complication for the timeline of Russia's summer offensive

Researcher **Natia Seskuria**, a Russian security specialist quoted by **CNBC**, said it remained premature to assess just how far **Ukraine** could fully isolate **Crimea**, but that continued strikes on the peninsula risked significantly complicating Russia's summer offensive. This logistical complication, if confirmed, would delay the **Kremlin's** military plans at the very moment its forces are trying to advance in the **Donbas**.

"**Ukraine** is effectively demonstrating to Russians that the costs of this war keep rising, not just for **Putin's** regime, but for ordinary citizens too," **Seskuria** said. This psychological dimension of the campaign, which directly touches ordinary Russian life, adds to its strictly military and budgetary effectiveness.

*Isolating Crimea's energy supply is striking a symbol as much as a logistical reality. Putin annexed this peninsula in 2014 promising prosperity, and now it is buckling under fuel shortages. History has an irony even Kremlin propaganda cannot fully smother.*

## What Putin admits, despite himself, about the fuel crisis

### "Not critical," according to the Russian president himself

According to **Al Jazeera**, **Vladimir Putin** acknowledged the Sunday before July 4, 2026 that the strikes were causing a fuel shortage, while calling it "not critical" and insisting that damaged facilities were being repaired quickly. This admission, even downplayed, is a rare public acknowledgment of the Ukrainian campaign's effectiveness, coming directly from the top of the Russian state.

More than 90% of Russian regions have introduced some form of rationing or reported gasoline and diesel shortages, according to official statements and local media relayed by **Al Jazeera**. This figure, if confirmed in full, points to a domestic energy crisis of a scale **Russia** has not seen in decades, despite its status as a global oil power.

### Denial contradicted by its own ministers

Russian Deputy Prime Minister **Alexander Novak** described the domestic fuel market situation as "not easy, but manageable," according to the **Washington Post**, while Finance Minister **Anton Siluanov** denied that the crisis had caused a sharp rise in gasoline prices. These cautious, almost defensive statements clash with the scale of rationing measures deployed on the ground, revealing a now-familiar gap between official messaging and the reality experienced by the Russian population.

This dissonance between government communication and documented facts echoes what has been seen on the military **front** in **Kostiantynivka**: Russian authorities systematically try to downplay what they can no longer fully hide, a communication strategy that wears thinner with every new episode.

*When Putin himself has to publicly admit a shortage, even calling it minor, that means the situation is serious. A dictator who controls his own narrative never concedes an inch of rhetorical ground unless forced by facts he can no longer conceal.*

## The diplomatic dimension of this campaign

### An escalation Washington is watching with concern

According to **CNBC**, defense experts and strategists described the Ukrainian drone campaign as a decisive factor in slowing Russian military momentum, while warning that **Kyiv's** deep-strike successes had considerably raised the risk of escalation. This tension between the campaign's strategic effectiveness and its escalation risk is a dilemma **Ukraine's** Western partners must manage carefully.

Finnish Prime Minister **Alexander Stubb**, quoted by **CNBC**, summed up the situation in two distinct parts: on one hand, drones and missiles striking Russian refineries and cutting their production and export capacity by roughly 40%; on the other, the broader question of how this economic pressure will affect **Putin's** willingness to negotiate an end to the conflict. This distinction usefully clarifies the complexity of the strategic equation at play.

### The Flamingo missile, a symbol of growing Ukrainian autonomy

Also according to **CNBC**, analyst **Robert Tollast** noted that locally made Ukrainian cruise missiles, such as the **Flamingo**, are now striking industrial sites, including those tied to air-defense production, further worsening the situation for **Moscow**. This rise of Ukraine's own defense industry, capable of producing its own long-range strike weapons, is gradually reducing **Kyiv's** dependence on Western deliveries for this particular capability.

This is a major strategic development that international media coverage, focused on American **Patriot** deliveries, tends to underestimate. **Ukraine** is no longer merely receiving Western weapons: it is building an autonomous strike capability that is durably shifting the balance of power with **Russia**.

*The Flamingo missile deserves more attention than American Patriots alone get. A Ukraine that builds its own long-range strike weapons is a Ukraine that will no longer forever depend on Washington's shifting goodwill. This might be the war's truest strategic victory.*

## The human cost paid on Ukrainian soil in return

### 21 dead in Kyiv, days after the Ankara summit

According to **The Guardian**, **Russia** fired missiles and drones at residential buildings in **Kyiv** for the second time in a week on Monday, July 6, 2026, killing at least 21 people and exposing the critical shortage of American interceptors the Ukrainian capital suffers from, according to Ukrainian authorities. This strike came just days after a previous massive attack that had killed at least 27 people in the capital.

This cycle of retaliation, Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil followed by deadly Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilians, is a reminder of an essential truth: economic warfare never replaces the human cost of conventional war. Every tactical victory against the Russian oil apparatus is paid back, in return, with Ukrainian civilian lives lost beneath the rubble of residential buildings.

### An air defense stretched to its limits

This documented exposure of the shortage of American interceptors in **Kyiv** is a reminder of why the **Patriot** license promised in **Ankara** remains so urgent, despite its multi-year implementation delays. While **Ukraine** excels at its offensive campaign against Russian oil, its domestic air defense remains its most critical and immediate vulnerability.

This asymmetry between a booming Ukrainian offensive capability and still-insufficient air defense is the central paradox of this phase of the war. **Kyiv** can strike **Omsk** 2,700 kilometers away, but cannot yet fully protect its own residential buildings against Russian retaliation.

*We owe it to the truth to say both things at once: Ukraine is striking Russian oil with remarkable effectiveness, and it keeps losing civilians under Russian bombs for lack of enough interceptors. Celebrating one without acknowledging the other would be dishonest toward the families of Kyiv.*

## The Russian response and the militarization of civil defense

### Banks ordered to defend themselves against drones

According to **The Guardian**, the Russian parliament passed a law allowing the country's major banks, including **Sberbank**, to manage their own defense mechanisms and arm personnel against drone incursions, without going through state special forces. This measure, revealing a diffuse security pressure inside Russian territory itself, shows just how far the war has now spread beyond border zones alone and into the heart of the Russian financial system.

That civilian banking institutions must equip themselves with anti-drone defense capabilities is a worrying sign for the **Kremlin**, revealing a systemic vulnerability that official Russian propaganda prefers not to dwell on. This creeping militarization of Russian civilian life shows a war that is now infiltrating every corner of society.

### Pressure now spreading across the whole of Russian territory

The targets hit in recent weeks, from **Voronezh** to **Tatarstan**, via **Saratov** and **Bashkortostan**, draw a strike map that now covers a considerable share of Russian territory, well beyond the border regions traditionally targeted since 2022. This geographic expansion of the Ukrainian campaign demonstrates an operational capability that simply did not exist at the start of the Russian invasion.

It is this gradual, patient, and methodical evolution that distinguishes the current campaign from the more sporadic strikes of the war's early years. **Ukraine** has built, year after year, a deep-strike capability that is now redefining the very terms of the conflict.

*Seeing Russian banks ordered to fend off Ukrainian drones themselves is a symbol as powerful as any burning refinery. The war Putin wanted short and far from daily Russian life has now settled into the boardrooms of the country's largest financial institutions.*

## The structural limits of this strategy

### A reserve capacity that complicates the final tally

According to analyst **Robert Tollast**, quoted by **CNBC**, it remains too early to say whether **Russia** will suffer lasting damage, since the Russian oil sector has long held significant spare capacity. This important nuance is a reminder that a strike campaign, even a massive and well-documented one, does not necessarily bring about a definitive structural collapse of an oil industry as vast as Russia's.

This analytical caution should not be mistaken for skepticism about the campaign's effectiveness. It simply reminds us that economic warfare, like conventional warfare, is measured in months and years, not isolated strikes, even when those strikes pile up at an impressive pace, as they did this week in July 2026.

### The paradox of targeted ports without immediate effect on revenue

According to the **New York Times**, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense said these coordinated, precision strikes aim to deprive the **Kremlin** of billions of dollars that directly turn into missiles and munitions. But the same article notes that targeting ports and **tankers** mainly affects the companies involved in selling and transporting the oil, without necessarily significantly affecting the direct revenue flow to the Russian state, which collects its taxes regardless of the final carrier.

This technical nuance complicates an overly simplistic reading of the campaign's effectiveness. It suggests that the real impact on the Russian state budget could be more indirect and slower than the spectacular images of burning refineries suggest, without invalidating the overall strategic value of the Ukrainian approach.

*I prefer this uncomfortable nuance to easy triumphalism. This oil war is not an instant victory that will make Putin buckle in a few weeks, it's slow, methodical sapping whose full effects may only be measurable years from now.*

## What this campaign reveals about Ukrainian doctrine

### A strategy that has matured since summer 2025

According to **CNBC**, this campaign against Russian oil infrastructure fits into a strategy launched as early as summer 2025, which has benefited from steady improvements in the production and range of Ukrainian drones over the months. This gradual maturation, far from a one-off stroke of luck, reflects sustained industrial and doctrinal investment by **Kyiv**, which has made deep strikes a top strategic priority.

This doctrine, now fully embraced, marks a break from the war's early years, when **Ukraine** focused mainly on defending its own territory. The ability to carry the war directly into the aggressor's economic heart is a major strategic development, comparable to other historic turning points where an invaded country chose to make the aggressor pay the economic price of its own aggression.

### A model that could inspire other threatened democracies

This Ukrainian approach, methodically targeting the financing of the enemy's war machine rather than settling for passive defense, offers a strategic lesson that goes beyond this war alone. It shows that a smaller but determined and technologically inventive nation can inflict a disproportionate economic cost on a far more powerful aggressor on paper.

This lesson deserves close attention from other democracies facing threatening authoritarian neighbors, whether **Taiwan** facing **China**, or the Baltic states facing a **Russia** that, despite Ukrainian strikes, remains a lasting threat to the entire eastern flank of **NATO**.

*Under the pressure of survival, Ukraine has invented an economic warfare doctrine worth studying in every Western military academy. This isn't just a defensive war it's fighting, it's a lesson in strategic resilience offered to every threatened democracy.*

## The reaction of markets and international analysts

### A tanker decline observed in trading data

According to a **Bloomberg** analysis relayed by the **New York Times**, the number of **tankers** loading oil at the **Ust-Luga** and **Primorsk** terminals, which together handle roughly 40% of Russia's seaborne crude exports, has declined significantly following repeated Ukrainian strikes on these facilities. This market data, independent of official statements from either side, confirms a real and measurable impact on Russian oil trade flows.

This kind of verification through international trade data is, much like the **ISW's** maps of the ground **front**, a valuable tool for objectively assessing the campaign's effectiveness, independent of the war propaganda from both sides of the conflict.

### Expert Tatiana Mitrova and the risk of structural fragility

Energy expert **Tatiana Mitrova**, of **Columbia University** in New York, warned, according to **Le Monde**, that repeated strikes were making the Russian oil system "more fragile, more costly to operate, and more exposed to cumulative disruption." She noted that if attacks continued simultaneously on several nodes, ports, storage, refineries, and maritime transport, the risk would shift from temporary disruption to structurally weaker flexibility, and potentially reduced supply over time.

This expert assessment, cautious but alarming for **Moscow**, suggests that the accumulation of Ukrainian strikes could produce far deeper effects in the medium term than any single strike suggests on its own. It is this cumulative dimension, more than the spectacular effect of any one attack, that should worry **Kremlin** strategists most seriously.

*It's this cumulative fragility, patient and invisible to the general public, that strikes me as most dangerous for Putin in the long run. A burning refinery makes headlines for a day, but it's the combined effect of dozens of attacks over months that will eventually structurally wear down the Russian oil machine.*

## What the involvement of Western intelligence reveals

### A technical improvement that doesn't come from Kyiv alone

According to analyst **Robert Tollast**, quoted by **CNBC**, foreign support has likely played a role in improving **Ukraine's** deep-strike capabilities, particularly in identifying and locating targets as vast and dispersed as Russian refineries and oil terminals. This international dimension of the campaign, rarely detailed publicly for obvious operational security reasons, is a reminder that this oil war remains, in part, a collective Western effort rather than a strictly Ukrainian initiative.

This discreet collaboration illustrates a broader reality of this conflict: Ukrainian resistance, however heroic and inventive, rests on a Western support ecosystem that goes beyond visible weapons deliveries alone. Intelligence, training, and satellite data sharing are pillars just as essential as **Patriots** or **Flamingo** drones.

### A cooperation that stays under the media radar

This intelligence cooperation, if it exists at the scale some analysts suggest, deserves to be acknowledged without diminishing Ukrainian engineering's own merit, which has managed to turn this information into concrete operational capabilities. It is the combination of the two, Western know-how and Ukrainian tactical daring, that explains the effectiveness observed in this campaign since summer 2025.

Acknowledging this collective dimension in no way diminishes the Ukrainian feat. It instead reminds us that this war, in its economic dimension as much as its military one, remains a confrontation between the free world and an authoritarian aggressor, where every Western ally plays a role, sometimes discreet, in **Kyiv's** resistance.

*I never downplay the role of Western intelligence in these Ukrainian successes, because denying it would be lying by omission. But I also refuse to reduce this campaign to a mere foreign technological feat: it is Ukrainian drone pilots pulling the trigger, thousands of kilometers from home.*

## The historical precedent this campaign recalls

### A logic already seen in other asymmetric conflicts

Military history offers several precedents of militarily weaker nations choosing to target their aggressor's economic apparatus rather than confront it head-on solely on conventional ground. This logic, not unique to **Ukraine**, finds a particularly refined application here thanks to the technological maturity of long-range drones, a weapon that would have been unthinkable at this scale just a decade ago.

What distinguishes the Ukrainian campaign from these historical precedents is its relative transparency: every strike is documented, claimed, geolocated, and verified by independent sources such as the **ISW**, rather than carried out in the shadows. This deliberate transparency is, in itself, a strategic communication choice aimed at maintaining the campaign's legitimacy with Western public opinion.

### A legitimacy that still needs defending against critics

This transparency does not stop some voices, notably in **Russia** but sometimes in the **West** too, from describing these strikes as an uncontrollable escalation risk. These criticisms deserve to be heard without undermining the fundamental legitimacy of the approach: an invaded country has the right to target infrastructure that directly finances its own aggression, a principle recognized under international humanitarian law when it comes to dual-use military and economic targets.

It is this legitimacy, rooted in the right to self-defense, that should continue to guide the assessment of this campaign, rather than escalation fears alone, however legitimate those may otherwise be. The aggressor remains **Putin**, not **Zelensky**, and this fundamental reality should never be diluted in overly technical debates about escalation.

*We should never lose sight of who started this war. Ukraine is merely exercising its fundamental right to defend itself by striking its aggressor's sources of financing. Those worried about escalation should first worry about the invasion that made this escalation necessary.*

## What this oil war also costs the West

### Indirect pressure on global energy markets

This Ukrainian campaign, though it exclusively targets Russian assets, is not without consequences for global energy markets, including for the Western economies that support **Kyiv**. Every major disruption to Russian oil supply can, to some extent, contribute to volatility in international prices, a side effect Western governments must accept as the cost of strategic solidarity with **Ukraine**.

This economic reality has not, however, slowed Western support for the Ukrainian campaign, which reflects a clear hierarchy of priorities: the strategic necessity of weakening the Russian war machine outweighs, for the vast majority of allied capitals, the occasional economic discomfort this oil war may cause on global markets.

### A signal of determination the West must not betray

This Western choice to tolerate these side effects rather than rein in the Ukrainian campaign sends an important signal to **Moscow**: the coalition supporting **Kyiv** remains willing to accept a shared economic cost to keep pressure on the **Kremlin**. It is this kind of collective determination, more than any single diplomatic statement, that truly shapes the long-term balance of power.

Betraying this determination by curbing the Ukrainian campaign under the guise of global oil market stability would send a dangerous signal of weakness, precisely at the moment the campaign is starting to produce measurable effects on **Putin's** war finances. The **West** must stay at the center of the world by shouldering the costs, even modest ones, of this strategic solidarity.

*If a few extra dollars at the pump in Europe or North America can help deprive Putin of his war financing, that is a price the West must pay without hesitation. Weighing this minor inconvenience against the Ukrainian lives saved should leave no room for doubt.*

### One last remark before closing this file

It would be tempting to reduce this oil war to a mere percentage statistic of disabled refining capacity. But behind every figure lies a deeper reality: that of a Ukrainian people who chose to turn their defensive resistance into a methodical economic offensive against the very apparatus financing their own destruction.

This strategic transformation, patient and documented month after month, deserves to be told with the rigor it demands, without giving in either to easy triumphalism or to excessive skepticism toward results that, despite their limits, are already redrawing the economic geography of this war.

*This oil war is not yet won, but it is no longer a lost cause for Ukraine either. Every refinery hit, every tanker immobilized, is a reminder that Ukrainian resistance is no longer confined to the trenches of the Donbas, it now reaches all the way to the edges of Siberia.*

## Conclusion: an economic weapon that is redefining the war

### What we can state with certainty today

At the end of this report, one solid conclusion emerges: **Ukraine** has developed, over nearly two years, a deep-strike capability that has genuinely damaged the Russian oil apparatus, between a third and nearly half of its refining capacity according to available estimates, while causing documented fuel shortages in more than 90% of Russian regions. This campaign, far from a merely symbolic gesture, is a real economic weapon against the financing of **Vladimir Putin's** war.

But this documented effectiveness should not obscure its limits: the Russian oil sector's spare capacity, the gap between the impact on carriers and the real impact on state tax revenue, and above all the human price paid in return by Ukrainian civilians under Russian retaliation. This economic war does not replace, it complements, the conventional war that keeps costing lives every week.

### What this campaign signals for the rest of the conflict

In the months ahead, how this **oil battle** evolves will largely depend on **Ukraine's** ability to keep up the pace of its strikes, but also on the real resilience of the Russian industrial apparatus, whose exact scale remains debated between official Ukrainian estimates and more cautious independent analyses. This file will keep evolving every week, at the pace of new strikes documented by open sources.

What remains certain is that **Putin's** **Russia** can no longer consider any of its oil infrastructure definitively safe, from **Moscow** to distant **Siberia**. This reality, documented strike after strike, may be the most lasting strategic change of this phase of the war.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Ukraine strikes 21 Russian tankers, traffic in the Don-Azov canal halted — Kyiv Independent, July 11, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/russia-halts-shipping-through-don-azov-canal-after-ukrainian-strike-on-vessels-reuters-reports/)

- [Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 7-8 — Institute for the Study of War, July 9, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-8-2026/)

- [Ukraine hits oil facilities near St. Petersburg — Al Jazeera, July 4, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/4/ukraine-hits-oil-and-military-facilities-near-russias-st-petersburg)

### Secondary sources

- [How Ukrainian drone strikes are ravaging Russia — CNBC, July 9, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-drone-strikes-russia-nato.html)

- [Strike on the Omsk refinery in Siberia — The Guardian, July 7, 2026](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/07/ukraine-war-briefing-drones-strike-russia-oil-refinery-in-siberia-as-zelenskyy-warns-region-now-within-reach)

- [Unease deepens in Russia over Ukrainian strikes — The Washington Post, June 27, 2026](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/06/27/unease-deepens-russia-ukraine-steps-up-long-range-strikes/)

- [Ukraine strikes Russia's lifeblood by targeting oil ports — Le Monde, March 31, 2026](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/03/31/ukraine-strikes-russia-s-lifeblood-by-targeting-oil-ports_6751982_4.html)

---

Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/report-how-kyiv-is-methodically-draining-the-oil-that-funds-putin