As of: January 30, 2024, 10:25 a.m
By: Bettina Menzel
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The fire department in the city of Klintsy is trying to bring the fire in an oil storage facility under control, which was caused by a Ukrainian drone attack (picture from January 19, 2024).
© IMAGO/Russia Emergencies Ministry/ITAR-TASS
Small drone, big impact: Ukraine recently carried out several attacks on Russian oil storage facilities.
The damage is in the millions.
Klintsy – An oil depot in the Bryansk region of Russia recently went up in flames during the Ukrainian war.
The damage was probably in the millions, not to mention the logistical disadvantages for Russia.
The cause of the explosion: a Ukrainian drone attack.
Kiev's drone operators have managed to attack several oil and gas terminals in Russia in recent weeks.
As Kiev's troops slowly run out of ammunition and military aid from the West dwindles, innovative drone production appears to have long since overtaken Russia.
Ukraine is developing its own drones in the fight against Russia – with success
Ukraine's ingenuity is unbroken.
Kiev is countering the lack of ammunition with 3D-printed bombs and the lack of weapons deliveries from the West with domestic drone production.
Already at the beginning of the war, the Deputy Minister for Digital Transformation in Ukraine, Alex Bornyakov, announced an army of drones that would protect the skies over Ukraine.
But apparently it has now also been possible to develop attack drones that can cover long distances to hit military targets deep in the Russian heartland.
A Ukrainian government official told the Interfax news agency that a domestic drone was used in an attack near St. Petersburg that flew over 1,250 kilometers.
The information could not be independently confirmed.
But the numerous drone attacks on important Russian oil depots in recent weeks are silent witnesses to Ukraine's new reach.
These include the fires at the Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, at an oil depot in the Oryol region, at the oil storage facility in Klintsy in the Bryansk region, at an oil terminal in the St. Petersburg area, and at the Baltic Sea terminal in Ust-Luga.
They are all attributed to Ukraine.
The attacks fulfill several goals: On the one hand, the lack of fuel complicates Russia's military logistics.
“Strikes on oil depots and oil storage facilities disrupt logistics routes and slow down combat operations,” Olena Lapenko, an energy security expert at the Ukrainian think tank DiXi Group, told the
New York Times
.
Ukraine war: Kiev wants to dry up the Kremlin's war chest with drone attacks
On the other hand, the attacks on the oil storage facilities also mean there is a lack of money in the Kremlin's war chest.
Oil and gas sales account for around 40 percent of Russian government revenue.
Revenue from oil alone was $420 billion (around €387 billion) last year, as reported by
the Guardian
and the
New York Times
.
“Russia finances its military from oil exports.” Countries like India and China cannot be convinced to stop buying.
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“So they are destroying Russian oil refineries,” Illia Ponomarenko, a former reporter for the
Kyiv Independent
newspaper, said of Ukraine’s strategy.
This could cause great damage to the Russian economy, the expert continued.
As a result of the attacks and due to bad weather, Russian seaborne crude oil shipments are at their lowest level in almost two months, according to
Bloomberg
.
Ukraine War: Drones can “cause devastating damage” against flammable targets
Moscow appears to be aware of the threat.
In the Leningrad region, for example, critical infrastructure facilities have been declared on high alert.
Some air defense systems have been withdrawn from the front line and moved near important cities, several media outlets reported.
However, Russian air defense has proven to be less effective against the small drones, experts said.
Most of Russia's layered defenses “were built to identify and destroy larger targets such as missiles, helicopters and aircraft.
"Many weren't really designed to detect much smaller [unmanned aerial vehicles]," Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert on unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyzes, told
Business Insider
.
Small unmanned drones are changing modern war – Russia is also relying on drones
Small, inexpensive drones could cause devastating damage with even a minimal bomb load if used against flammable targets, said National Defense University research fellow Thomas X Hammes.
But drones are also an important weapon in war for Russia.
As the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on Saturday (January 27), Russian armed forces carried out drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Friday and Saturday.
However, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, they managed to intercept all four Shahed-136/131 drones.
Apparently Ukraine's drone army is soon getting reinforcements: On Saturday, the American company Titan Dynamics announced that it had developed the "Titan Falcon", a so-called first-person view drone with interchangeable wings for the Ukrainian armed forces.
According to Ukrainian information, the German company Donaustahl GmbH is supposed to produce the model.
Their range is said to be 400 kilometers.