Since early August 2025, Ukraine has executed a significant strategic pivot in its long-range strike campaign, shifting its focus to systematically degrade Russia’s energy infrastructure. While this initiative began in earnest in the summer of 2025, its origins date back to early 2024, when Ukraine’s nascent long-range strike capabilities first proved capable of threatening the Russian rear.

The timing of this initial campaign, however, was inopportune from the perspective of Kyiv's most powerful ally. As the Biden administration headed into an election year facing stubborn domestic inflation and rising energy prices, Washington reportedly privately urged the Ukrainians to desist from hitting Russian oil infrastructure. The White House feared that a successful campaign against Russian refineries would further constrict global supply, drive up prices at the pump for American consumers, and risk a wider, unpredictable retaliation from Moscow.

However, by late 2025, the geopolitical and economic landscape had changed dramatically. The global oil market, which had previously been a primary source of concern for the US administration, began to cool. Fears of a supply glut started to mount, and OPEC+, after a period of production cuts, opted instead for a series of output increases, putting further downward pressure on an already bearish oil market. In October 2025, both WTI and Brent prices were down approximately 20 percent year-on-year, with further OPEC+ production hikes on the horizon.

This new market reality, combined with the Trump administration’s growing frustration over stalled diplomatic efforts, precipitated a significant, if quiet, shift in US policy. By the summer of 2025, Washington had reportedly moved from caution to collaboration. According to reporting by the WSJ and the Financial Times, the US not only acquiesced to the Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure but began providing intelligence to help plan them, including crucial data to help drones evade Russian air defence systems. This support has transformed a potent Ukrainian initiative into a highly effective, coordinated campaign designed to cripple the Kremlin’s ability to finance and fuel its invasion.

Since August, the tempo of these strikes has accelerated, becoming an almost daily occurrence by October. An OSC analysis of over 90 strikes between 2 August 2025 and 13 October 2025, published alongside an analysis by Reuters, reveals that approximately two thirds are now directed against oil refineries, major pipelines, pumping stations and other Russian energy infrastructure.

So far, Ukrainian forces have relied on long-range UAVs and domestically manufactured missiles, such as the Neptune and the new 3,000-kilometre range Flamingo, a cruise missile. Faced with restrictions on the use of foreign-supplied strike assets, Ukraine has developed a range of increasingly long-range missiles and UAVs, capable of hitting targets deep behind the front line with growing accuracy and regularity. 

The image below, captured in the immediate aftermath of a Ukrainian drone attack at the Feodosia sea oil terminal in the early hours of 6 October, shows multiple destroyed oil storage tanks. Local residents reported that the halo from the burning tanks was visible about 30 kilometres from the site.

Since August, however, the target set has expanded dramatically to include sea loading terminals, gas terminals, and, most critically, linear production and dispatch stations (ЛПДС), critical control nodes of major oil pipelines.

The strategic precision and cascading consequences of this campaign are exemplified by two repeated strikes on the Unecha pumping station in August 2025. This facility is not merely a section of the pipeline but a critical node regulating oil flow on the Druzhba pipeline.

Analysis by OSC indicates that the attacks likely targeted the flow-control mechanism connecting the Druzhba pipeline to the Baltic Pipeline System-2, demonstrating a surgical focus on disabling key infrastructure rather than causing indiscriminate damage.