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Ukraine used its latest technology to escalate tensions against Russian oil depots, ports and refineries last week, bombing the Urals 1,600 kilometers (990 miles) from its border and prompting “terrorist” protests from a Kremlin spokesman.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday announced “a new step in the use of Ukrainian weapons to reduce the possibility of a Russian war”.
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The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) later reported that it had hit the Transneft oil pumping station in the city of Perm on the same day, where oil was pumped to the Perm refinery and passed through pipelines in four directions across Russia.
The site is a “very important place for the transportation of oil”, the SBU said, and the initial information said that “almost all oil storage tanks are on fire”.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the strike and said it had shot down 98 Ukrainian UAVs in different areas.
“The Ural rivers are now close, be careful,” wrote the Russian presidential ambassador to the region, Artem Zhoga.
The Ukrainian campaign has begun to influence the Russian government.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attack on the gas station “terrorist”.
The announcement by the Ministry of Defense of Russia – that the armed forces and weapons will not take part in this year’s Victory Day parade commemorating the end of the Second World War “due to the current state of operations” – was also interpreted as a way to avoid airstrikes on Ukrainian planes.
The attack on Ukraine is one way to deprive Russia of windfall profits due to rising oil prices due to closing the Strait of Hormuz.
Zelenskyy said internal Russian documents seen by foreign intelligence experts confirmed that Ukraine had seized many oil ports.
Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea lost 13 percent and 43 percent of power, respectively, and the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk 38 percent.
“We hope that such internal Russian information can be minimized,” Zelenskyy said.
Internal figures are consistent with a Reuters estimate in March that Russia lost about 40 percent of its exports.
This changed to a loss of $2.3bn in March, Zelenskyy says.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based military think tank, said Ukraine may have carried out at least 18 attacks against Russian oil facilities in April.
The attack on Kyiv has been “increasing in frequency, scale, and scope” and “significant challenges to Russian oil exports”.
Ukraine also hit other oil and military targets last week.
On April 23, it destroyed three oil storage tanks at the Gorky oil pumping station in Nizhny Novgorod and hit the Novokuibyshevsk petrochemical plant in Samara.
The next day, it destroyed two production facilities of the Atlant-Aero factory in Taganrog, Rostov, which builds the Molniya drones used to attack Ukrainian cities.
On Sunday, Ukraine hit the Yaroslavl oil refinery, and on Tuesday, it hit the Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea for the third time this month. Even before the latest attack, at least 24 oil storage tanks at the site were damaged, said Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Counting Disinformation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin he sent his Minister of Civil Defense, Emergency, and Disaster Relief, Alexander Kurenkov, to oversee the response.
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Ukraine has been developing its combat capabilities for a long time and uses 20 percent of its defense equipment on new technologies, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.
One of its drone manufacturers, Wild Hornets, recently said a pilot used its remote control system to fly a Sting interceptor drone at a range of 2,000km (1,240 miles).
On April 23, Fedorov said that Ukraine had successfully tested remote technology that allows pilots to operate from the relative safety of Kyiv or Lviv, “at a distance of hundreds and thousands of kilometers”.
Ukraine is now showing its military innovations to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates after Iran’s attack on the Gulf states.
Zelenskyy met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh on April 24 to discuss “the export of our defense technology to Ukraine and our capabilities in air defense”.
A few days later, he said that Kyiv produces twice as much military equipment as the military needs, and that “Ukrainian companies will have real access to the markets of partner countries, only if our military has the right to get the necessary equipment first”.
The growing relationship with the Gulf, he said, had caused concern in Moscow.
“Russia was very angry with our contacts in the Middle East and the Gulf region,” he told Ukrainians on Wednesday.
Surprisingly, he said that his allies, too, were angry about the competition.
“We are also aware of the difficulties that some of our friends are taking on this – friends who would like to limit the freedom of our country,” Zelenskyy said in a televised evening address. “We see this as their mistake.
