Translated material
Second theater of war: how and why the spring campaign of attacks on Russian infrastructure changes the balance of forces in the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine
Over the past three months alone, Ukraine has carried out 55 successful strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and another 18 on other industrial facilities. Although the intensity of this campaign remains the same as in the final months of last year, the increased striking power of the drones and the cascading nature of attacks increases the damage caused.
The Ukrainian air campaign of 2026 looks like another turning point in the war. During the previous three years of hostilities, Ukraine's critical weakness was the lack of long-range and precision weapons - cruise and ballistic missiles.
By increasing the striking force, range and number of drones, Ukraine has come closer to maximally eliminating this disadvantage. Although advanced Ukrainian drones still have less striking power compared to heavy missiles, they are much cheaper and therefore easier to scale and, as a result, are guaranteed to overload air defenses and allow cascading strikes on selected targets.
As a result, Ukraine managed to finally turn Russian territory into a second theater of military operations. And this irreversible change in the nature of the Russian-Ukrainian war will have and is already having serious military, economic and political consequences. And the technological capabilities and scale of Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory will most likely increase in the near future.
Spring offensive: dynamics and logic of attacks on Russian infrastructure
According to Re: Russia calculations based on an analysis of reports from the Ukrainian news agencies UNIAN and UNN, in the first five months of 2026, the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out 68 strikes on various Russian oil infrastructure facilities, 55 of which occurred in the last three months. In addition, 18 strikes were carried out on other industrial facilities in Russia. Obviously, these statistics include only effective strikes on significant objects, and in this case we are talking about the dynamics and intensity of precisely such events.
Throughout 2025, according to our calculations, the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out 157 successful attacks on Russian oil infrastructure facilities and 55 on other industrial facilities. The average intensity of effective strikes is thus comparable in 2025 and 2026: 17.7 and 17.2 per month, respectively. In reality, as can be seen in graph 1, we are talking about two periods of high intensity attacks on long-range targets (deep strikes) - in August–December 2025 and in March–May 2026. And although the intensity of attacks in the first period is slightly higher (28.4 per month) than in the second (23.7 per month), the second campaign, which, apparently, is just unfolding, significantly exceeds the previous one in terms of effectiveness and impact power of attacks.
Chart 1. Ukrainian Armed Forces strikes on oil infrastructure and other industrial facilities, 2025–2026
The main target of Ukrainian long-range strikes, as is known, is the Russian oil infrastructure, which in Kyiv, not without reason, is considered the Achilles heel of the Russian military machine. In 2025, strikes on it accounted for 75% of the total number of all effective strikes, and in five months of 2026 - almost 80%. Strikes against Russian oil refineries accounted for about 40% of all successful long-range strikes both in 2025 and in the first months of 2026. But the share of attacks on offshore oil terminals has changed dramatically: last year they accounted for only 4% of attacks (nine during the year), and at the beginning of 2026 - already more than 20% (18 attacks).
As in 2025, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used the tactic of cascading attacks on the same key facilities, trying to disable them to the maximum extent (see Table 1 in the Appendix). At the same time, unlike last year, the new campaign was initially specifically focused on the oil export infrastructure - both at oil export terminals and at associated refineries that produce petroleum products for the external market (→ Re: Russia: The Kremlin's Baltic Hormuz ). The Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga were hit five and six times in March-April, respectively. Another seven effective strikes occurred on the Black Sea port infrastructure: three - on facilities in Novorossiysk, two - in Taman, and one each - on the port of Temryuk and the Feodosiya oil terminal in Crimea.
At the same time, 12 strikes on oil export infrastructure (ports in Ust-Luga, Primorsk and Novorossiysk) were carried out in a short period between March 22 and April 7. This, as we have already written, led to a sharp reduction in seaborne exports of oil and petroleum products from Russia. The drop in shipments, according to ship tracking data used by Bloomberg , was observed over a three-week period (March 22-April 12). However, after April 7, the attacks on export capacity stopped. It can be assumed that this was the result of requests from the United States and Ukraine's European allies, concerned that the reduction in Russian supplies was exacerbating the oil crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Kyiv, apparently, had to compromise and temporarily abandon this line of attack. (At the same time, the oil terminals of Taman, Temryuk and Feodosia were also hit during May.)
After this, Ukrainian attacks focused primarily on Russian refineries: from April 16 to May 31, 21 attacks were carried out on 10 plants. Most often during this time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces hit the Tuapse Oil Refinery, which was attacked three times in 2025, and four times between April 16 and May 1. As a result of the prolonged burning of oil tanks in the city, the environmental situation sharply deteriorated and there was “oil rain.” The Yaroslavl oil refinery, which was attacked four times back in 2025, was again subjected to a series of attacks in March–May 2026 (four attacks were carried out on the plant itself and two on the oil pumping station).
In addition, since the beginning of 2025, we have counted 76 effective air strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against other industrial facilities not related to oil, 18 of which occurred in the first five months of 2026. In general, throughout 2025, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' targets were dominated by manufacturers of electronics (15 strikes), as well as explosives and ammunition (9) and missiles (8). This year, the leaders so far are fertilizer plants (4), as well as aircraft production, electronics and explosives (3 each; see Table 2 in the Appendix).
In 2026, the Ukrainian Armed Forces for the first time attacked factories in the Tver, Novgorod and Ulyanovsk regions. At the same time, the enterprises of the Tula region, which were one of the main targets of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2025 (nine strikes, of which three hit the Shipunov KBP and two hit the Aleksinsky Chemical Plant), were not attacked even once in 2026. The manufacturer of electronic components for missile control systems, Silicon El, was hit by Ukrainian strikes three times, with the plant likely critically damaged or destroyed after a Storm Shadow missile hit in March 2026. Another success of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was the strike on the night of February 22 at the Votkinsk plant (Udmurtia), where components of the Iskander, Oreshnik, Yars, etc. missiles are produced. Thus, this class of strikes is almost exclusively focused on disrupting Russian military production and searching for bottlenecks in the supply chains of its components.
How big is the oil refinery crisis?
The actual damage to the Russian oil industry caused by Ukrainian Armed Forces strikes is extremely difficult to calculate at the moment, including due to the fact that Russian statistics on the production of oil and petroleum products remains closed. According to monthly reports from the International Energy Agency (IEA) , oil production in Russia in February and April 2026 decreased by 5% compared to last year’s levels. It is impossible to say to what extent this is connected specifically with the Ukrainian strikes. However, it is very eloquent that, despite the extremely tense situation with budget revenues and the suspension of American sanctions against Russian oil, which allowed increasing export supplies, Russia does not choose its oil production quota within the framework of the OPEC+ agreement: in February–April, the volumes of oil produced, according to the IEA, were 92% of the quota (see Table 3 in the Appendix). Finally, according to recently published data from Rosstat , the production of petroleum products in April 2026 decreased by 9% compared to April 2025. But we will see how stable all these trends are only based on the results of the May statistics: the main waves of Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries occurred in the second half of April and May (18 attacks).
According to Reuters estimates as of May 15, since the beginning of the year, about 700 thousand barrels of oil refining capacity at 16 refineries have been disabled, and this is twice as much as in the same period last year. This resulted from the shutdown of 35 primary distillation units with a total capacity of more than 2.85 million barrels per day (mbd), while during the same period in 2025, Ukrainian strikes led to the shutdown of 12 units with a capacity of 1.37 mbd, the agency said. In the second half of May, the same Reuters stated : “Almost all large oil refineries in central Russia were forced to suspend or reduce fuel production” this spring. As Forbes writes , citing analysts from Freedom Finance Global, as a result of attacks on the Tuapse Oil Refinery in the spring of 2026, 24 of the plant’s 47 tanks were completely destroyed. The enterprise was forced to stop working, and if its repairs drag on for at least a quarter, Rosneft’s exports of petroleum products could be reduced by 8–10%, the publication’s sources believe. And according to estimates from the analytical company OilX, whose data is cited by Bloomberg , oil refining in Russia as a whole amounted to 4.58 mbd in May, which is 13% less than in May last year.
One way or another, the Russian government introduced a complete ban on the export of gasoline (from April 1) and fuel kerosene (from June 1). And the shortage of AI-95 gasoline was felt on the stock exchange already in the first ten days of May, Kommersant reported . In the consumer market, gasoline shortages are still rapidly growing in Crimea, although this is not due to attacks on refineries, but to the situation on the Novorossiya highway, where Ukrainian drones have largely paralyzed traffic.
The full scale of the consequences of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ spring offensive on the Russian oil industry will become clear in the next two to three months. Last year, the Russian authorities managed to cope with the growing shortage of gasoline on the domestic market, using, in particular, the excess capacity of Belarusian refineries (→ Re: Russia: Gasoline hook ). However, in 2025, the intensive drone attack campaign did not begin until August, and its striking power was lower.
Despite the fact that in the censored Russian press the reasons for tension in the fuel market are described exclusively by the euphemism “unscheduled refinery repairs,” it was at the end of April that the perception of Ukrainian drone strikes in public opinion changed. In weekly FOM polls since the end of April, “shelling of Russian territories” has come out on top in the list of memorable recent events - they are mentioned by 15-18% of respondents, while in previous months there were 5-6%. This means that Ukrainian strikes have dominated the information background over the past month and a half (“endless shelling, but we are doing nothing”; “they are bombing Moscow”; “we have sirens and drones all the time”). It is interesting that in a survey at the end of May, Ukrainian shelling “won” information primacy even over the attack on a dormitory in Starobelsk (14% of mentions versus 9%).
Strategic sense: the second theater of war and the “democratization of precision”
The Ukrainian Armed Forces do not often reveal the striking weapons of their long-range attacks. However, apparently, the use of missiles in them still remains extremely limited, almost piecemeal. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that in 2024, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched more than 90 Storm Shadow missiles on Russian territory, and in 2025 - only about 45. Military analyst Alexander Kovalenko counted nine verified attacks by the Flamingo missile in five months of 2026, mainly on military facilities and factories (including the Votkinsk plant in Udmurtia). Cases of the use of Storm Shadow/SCALP also remain isolated: in 2026, we detected six verified attacks using them, including the one against the Silicon El plant in the Bryansk region.
The increasing effectiveness of Ukrainian attacks is associated primarily with the improvement of drones of its own production - the expansion of the line of long-range drones (FP-1, Bober, Sichen, etc.), as well as the modernization of the Lyutiy UAV. Since the second half of last year, they began to be equipped with a more powerful warhead - up to 75 kg instead of 50. The design of the drone was also modernized : a version without a chassis appeared, which is launched from a stationary catapult or a mobile launcher. This allows you to reduce fuel consumption, thereby increasing speed and range.
A real breakthrough has been the increase in the flight range of new modifications of drones, which cover distances of more than 1,500 km, and will soon reach a range of 3,000 km, as Vladimir Zelensky assures . In the 2026 long-range strike campaign, noteworthy is the increase in the share of successful attacks over distances of over 900 km. Of the 32 shots in the first half of 2025, only 2 had such a depth, in the second half of the year - already 25% of effective shots, and in the first half of 2026 - 45% (Table 3 in the Appendix).
Finally, the third necessary factor was increasing the number of long-range drones. The ability of the Russian army to protect objects remote from the front line has decreased, including due to the effective campaign of middle strikes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which led to the systematic destruction of Russian air defense and electronic warfare systems (→ Re: Russia: War of attrition in the air ). However, the capabilities of air defense in the face of swarm drone attacks are limited in any case: their capabilities can protect a limited number of targets. As Atlantic Council analyst Peter Dickinson wittily noted , the size of Russian territory in the face of drone deep strikes has turned from an advantage into a vulnerability: Ukrainian unmanned forces have at their disposal an unlimited choice of targets that cannot be covered at the same time.
However, the attack on Moscow on May 17 showed the limitations of even a dense air defense system against a massive drone attack: a wave of 160 UAVs was able to break through the air defense rings and hit several targets in Moscow and the Moscow region. Ukraine began to increase waves of attacks in the direction of Moscow and launched more long-range drones in Russia than Russia in the direction of Ukraine, analysts noted at the beginning of 2026. The realization of the turning point came to the Russian authorities, apparently, already in April and resulted in security hysteria on the eve of the May 9 celebration. Vladimir Putin had to resort to threats and diplomacy, including the mediation of Donald Trump, to secure his crumpled Victory Day parade. And eight days later, the Ukrainian command still demonstrated the fundamental vulnerability of the Moscow region in the face of a massive drone attack.
This is the key and, in a certain sense, fateful significance of the Ukrainian deep strike campaign in the spring of 2026. It has long been believed that even relative parity in air strikes between Ukraine and Russia is unattainable until Ukraine acquires a sufficient arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles. Although the striking power of drones is still far from that of heavy missiles, it can be said that the advantage of the latter over drones is rapidly shrinking. Primarily due to the cost of production, which allows them to compensate for their shortcomings by increasing the number of long-range drones and their capabilities in terms of precision strikes.
The essence of this “revolution in military affairs” is accurately described by the invited expert of the Carnegie Eurasia Endowment, Andrey Zagorodnyuk (Minister of Defense of Ukraine in 2019–2020). First, Starlink technology has expanded the control capabilities of FPV strike drones, and now they have advantages even over cruise missiles: they do not provide constant situational awareness and do not provide the ability to reassign targets in flight. But the main change is cheaper and scalable. The logic of the previous stage of technological development in military affairs was to replace mass production with precision. However, this made precision long-range weapons very expensive. Against this backdrop, Ukraine has “democratized precision and made its mass application possible” at relatively low costs, writes Zagorodnyuk. This revolution will continue, including by increasing the striking power of drones. And the balance of comparative advantages in the “long-range drones – high-precision missiles” pair will shift in favor of the former.
In any case, today it can be argued that, having never received long-range and high-precision weapons from its Western allies in sufficient quantities, Ukraine was able to finally turn Russian territory into a second theater of military operations. And this change is irreversible, and the technological capabilities and scale of Ukrainian attacks will most likely only increase in the near future.