Ukraine launched massive drone assaults against Russia this week, hitting key oil infrastructure and signaling Kyiv intends to block the Kremlin from increasing diesel exports in defiance of President Donald Trump .
More than 1,000 Ukrainian drones targeted Russia on Sunday alone in one of the largest attacks this year, according to state media reports. The strikes set ablaze an oil export terminal in St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin 's hometown.
Kyiv has ended its brief adherence to an energy ceasefire that Trump declared between Ukraine and Russia on Oct. 11. Moscow ignored that truce from the start and Kyiv vowed to retaliate.
Ukraine's drone strikes have achieved a scale, range and effectiveness that they have crippled Russia's diesel exports, said Tatiana Mitrova, an expert on the Russian oil industry at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Before the attacks, Russia was the second-largest diesel supplier in the world after the U.S.
As a result, Trump's deal with Putin to boost Russian diesel exports is likely dead in the water, said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler. "It seems unlikely that they'll be able to bring the volume of diesel back to the market that they are talking about without an energy ceasefire," Smith said.
Kyiv's strikes on Russian refineries and related oil infrastructure almost tripled to 31 in July compared with 11 in January, according to data from open-source intelligence firm Rochan Consulting in Warsaw, Poland.
The attacks slashed Russia's diesel exports by more than 75%, to 141,000 barrels per day (bpd) in September, compared with 608,000 bpd in the same period last year, according to Kpler data.
In response, Moscow banned exports in July to preserve domestic supplies. The Kremlin partially resumed shipments this month to fulfill the Trump-Putin deal.
Under Trump's diesel deal to relieve pressure on surging fuel prices, the Kremlin agreed to supply the global market with about 75,000 bpd in October and 124,000 bpd in November. But those export volumes are a rounding error compared with total demand, Mitrova said.
The Ukrainians are regularly launching swarms of drones now that number in the hundreds, compared with dozens earlier in the war, Mitrova said. They are also striking deeper into Russian territory, she said. In July, Kyiv hit Russia's largest refinery at Omsk , deep in Siberia near the Kazakhstan border, more than 1,000 miles from Ukraine.
And they have learned to target more complex refinery equipment that is harder to repair, Mitrova said. A destroyed fuel tank takes just a couple of weeks to fix, she said. But replacing a secondary refining unit, for example, requires supply chains outside Russia, the analyst said.
"You cannot just order it on Alibaba," Mitrova said. "You need to make your order in advance and therefore securing this equipment quickly is not possible. You need to compensate for the risks of all the parties involved because [counterparties] are violating sanctions."
"You have to wait at least for several months if the right equipment is destroyed," she said.
With midterm elections less than two weeks away, Trump has blamed Ukraine for surging diesel prices that are jeopardizing Republicans' election chances.
Nationally, diesel cost $6.32 per gallon on average Tuesday, nearly 75% above the same period last year, according to AAA.
But the diesel market was already under pressure due to Trump's decision to go to war with Iran in late February. Tehran's attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and strikes by its Houthi militant allies on oil infrastructure of U.S. Gulf Arab allies have disrupted fuel exports from the Middle East.
Diesel exports through Hormuz, for example, are down about 540,000 bpd compared with last year, Kpler's Smith said. Global diesel exports have fallen about 1 million bpd due to lost supplies from Russia and the Middle East, he said.
Trump's options to reduce fuel prices are limited. The underlying problem is the shortfall of refining capacity due to damage from two wars that don't appear close to ending soon. U.S. refiners are already working at maximum capacity to fill the gap as much as possible.
The International Energy Agency warned this month that diesel supplies will likely remain constrained well into 2027. "The diesel tightness is likely going to persist in the coming months and prices are going to remain elevated," Smith said.
