Ukraine is reshaping its long-range drone campaign against Russia’s energy industry, moving away from broad attacks designed primarily to ignite refineries and destroy fuel storage toward more precise strikes on critical components that are difficult to replace.
The shift reflects a broader Ukrainian effort to make each attack impose a longer and more expensive disruption on Russia’s war economy. Ukrainian military planners, drone operators and energy specialists say the objective is no longer simply to damage a refinery but to identify the industrial components whose destruction can keep a facility offline long after the initial attack.
One member of a Ukrainian deep-strike unit described the strategy as meticulously “targeted and co-ordinated,” reflecting a campaign increasingly based on technical analysis rather than the indiscriminate destruction of large facilities.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last weekend that he had instructed Ukraine’s newly appointed commander in chief and acting defense minister to expand the country’s deep-strike campaign against targets inside Russia.
According to Financial Times, Yevhenii Khmara, the incoming defense minister, said he had worked with the new top commander, Mykhailo Drapatyi, on plans to move the war as far as possible onto Russian territory.
“Ukraine will continue to exert shock and technological pressure on Russia by all means,” said Khmara, adding that Kyiv needed to scale up operations that had already proved effective, particularly deep-strike attacks.
The change in strategy is partly driven by the resilience of Russia’s energy infrastructure. Large refineries and storage facilities can often be repaired, allowing production to resume after an attack. Ukrainian planners are therefore increasingly looking for vulnerabilities in the industrial systems that connect individual facilities and make them function as a whole.
Two Ukrainian deep-strike drone operators said target selection is guided by detailed technical assessments prepared by officials and specialists. The planning takes into account logistics, flight paths, Russian air defenses and the broader objectives of each operation.
Before missions, drone units receive briefings from energy engineers and industry experts who identify which components are indispensable to refinery operations and which would take the longest to replace.
The specialists may direct drone operators toward particular pipelines, chimneys, equipment connections or electrical components rather than simply ordering an attack on the largest visible structure.
“They tell us, ‘these pipelines here, or this chimney, hit here in this space, or this part of the equipment connection, or this box,’ and so on,” one drone operator said.
Some operations continue to involve attacks on large oil depots, where drones carrying munitions with fragmentation elements can damage storage and related infrastructure. But the broader campaign increasingly focuses on the less visible elements that determine whether a refinery can return to normal production.
Ukraine has a particular advantage in understanding those vulnerabilities because its energy industry, like Russia’s, was largely built around Soviet-era engineering. The two countries inherited similar industrial systems, giving Ukrainian engineers familiarity with many of the processes, equipment designs and layouts found inside Russian facilities.
“Sadly we learn from Russians,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk to Financial Times, a former Ukrainian defense minister and chairman of the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Kyiv-based security think tank.
Russia, he noted, has been using a similar approach against Ukraine by striking energy, military and civilian infrastructure.
“They are doing exactly the same to us here,” Zagorodnyuk said.
The result is a form of industrial warfare in which the value of a target is determined less by its size than by its position within a larger network.
Ukrainian planners describe the concept as “systemic warfare,” treating Russia’s energy sector as an interconnected system rather than a collection of individual refineries, substations, pipelines and transmission facilities.
“We think of Russia as a system,” Zagorodnyuk said. “Understanding that system allows you to identify the critical parts where the effect is much more substantial.”
That approach allows Ukrainian forces to seek disproportionate effects from relatively limited strikes. By mapping the dependencies between different elements of Russia’s energy network, planners can identify nodes where damage to one piece of equipment can disrupt operations across a much larger portion of the system.
The strategy also relies on repetition.
Ukrainian drone units have increasingly returned to the same critical equipment before repairs are complete, according to drone operators and an analysis of satellite imagery. The aim is to prevent damaged facilities from fully recovering and to force Russian operators into a cycle of emergency repairs.
Zagorodnyuk said that was a major change from the earlier stages of the campaign.
“We hit critical nodes over and over again before or shortly after they have been rebuilt,” he said. “Previously, it was a big problem. We were hitting something and it was later rebuilt.”
The repeated attacks turn repair work into another vulnerability. Even if Russia can replace damaged equipment, Ukrainian planners can attempt to strike the same or related components before the system has regained full capacity.
The campaign also depends on the ability of Ukrainian drones to reach targets deep inside Russia.
Ukrainian officials said intelligence supplied by the United States and France had helped map Russian air-defense deployments and identify flight routes that allow drones to avoid or penetrate defensive systems.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said the campaign depends in part on the “systematic elimination” of Russian air-defense, radar and electronic warfare systems. Removing those defenses, he said, helps create corridors through which drones can travel farther into Russian territory.
Once those corridors are available, Brovdi described target selection as “a matter of pure mathematics,” involving production volumes, domestic consumption, export flows and shipment points.
The calculations are intended to determine where a strike could produce the greatest economic and military effect.
Ukraine’s expanding strike range has also changed the geography of the war. Brovdi said Russia’s European territory, as well as occupied areas of Ukraine, is increasingly within range of Ukrainian drones.
“Eighty million people — roughly two-thirds of Russia’s population — live in the European part of the country, within the strike zone, which is no longer and will no longer be considered Russia’s safe rear area,” he said.
That assertion highlights a central objective of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign: to undermine the distinction between Russia’s front line and its rear areas.
For much of the war, Russia’s industrial centers and energy infrastructure far from the battlefield were relatively insulated from direct Ukrainian attack. Long-range drones have increasingly eroded that protection, forcing Moscow to defend strategic facilities across a vast territory.
The pressure is particularly significant for the energy sector because oil and refined petroleum products remain central to Russia’s economy and government revenues. They also provide fuel for the military and help finance Moscow’s ability to sustain the war.
Brovdi said refinery attacks are therefore only one element of a broader campaign designed to weaken the networks that sustain Russia’s military operations.
“The objective is clear: 1) to destroy the sources that finance Putin’s war [oil trade] and 2) [to destroy] the military-industrial complex that supplies the occupying army with weapons,” he said.
That dual objective connects Ukraine’s attacks on energy facilities with its broader campaign against Russia’s military-industrial base. A refinery that cannot operate affects fuel production, while disruption to logistics and industrial facilities can complicate the movement and manufacture of military equipment.
The campaign has also benefited from improvements in intelligence.
Zagorodnyuk said U.S. and French intelligence had helped Ukrainian planners understand where to strike and how to identify vulnerable components. The information has contributed to a detailed map of Russia’s energy network, allowing Ukrainian teams to focus on critical nodes and equipment that is particularly difficult to replace.
The importance of replacement time is crucial. A damaged component that can be manufactured or sourced quickly may produce only a temporary disruption. A specialized piece of equipment that requires months to replace can potentially keep an entire facility operating below capacity for a much longer period.
This means the effectiveness of Ukraine’s drone campaign cannot necessarily be measured by the number of explosions, fires or damaged buildings immediately visible after an attack. The more important measure may be how long the targeted facility remains unable to operate normally.
That distinction could become increasingly important as Russia adapts.
Moscow has invested heavily in air defenses, electronic warfare and the protection of strategic infrastructure. Russian authorities can also attempt to disperse production, stockpile fuel and accelerate repairs. The longer Ukraine continues its campaign, the more both sides will be engaged in a technological contest between offensive drones and defensive systems.
Ukrainian planners are responding by making their missions more flexible.
Operations are designed with multiple objectives and contingency options. If a drone cannot reach its primary target because of air defenses, navigation problems or other obstacles, operators can redirect it toward preselected secondary or tertiary targets.
The approach ensures that a mission is less likely to become ineffective simply because the original target is inaccessible.
It also reflects the changing nature of drone warfare. Long-range unmanned aircraft are relatively inexpensive compared with the strategic infrastructure they can threaten, creating an asymmetry that Ukraine is seeking to exploit.
For Russia, the challenge is therefore not limited to protecting individual refineries. It must defend an interconnected energy system stretching across a huge territory while maintaining enough resources to continue fighting on the front.
For Ukraine, the campaign offers a way to impose costs on Russia without relying exclusively on conventional weapons or ground operations. It also allows Kyiv to attack the economic foundations of Moscow’s war effort while attempting to demonstrate that Russian territory cannot remain a secure rear area.
The strategy carries risks. Strikes deep inside Russia could provoke retaliation against Ukrainian infrastructure or intensify pressure on civilians. Attacks on energy facilities can also have consequences beyond military targets, particularly when they affect fuel supplies, electricity or transportation.
But Kyiv appears increasingly convinced that the benefits outweigh those risks.
Brovdi said Ukraine had no intention of easing the campaign.
“The escalation of strikes, up to the complete destruction of the enemy’s fuel and energy sector and military-industrial complex, is inevitable,” he said.
The statement captures the strategic evolution of Ukraine’s long-range war. What began as a campaign of deep strikes against Russian refineries and oil depots is becoming a more sophisticated attempt to map, penetrate and repeatedly disrupt the industrial system that sustains Russia’s military power.
The objective is no longer simply to make Russian facilities burn.
It is to make them difficult to repair, expensive to operate and increasingly vulnerable to the next strike.
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