Almost 900 miles from Ukraine’s borders, a dramatic fire broke out at the Ufa oil refinery in Bashkortostan, Russia, on Saturday, October 11, 2025. According to Ukrainian security sources cited by multiple outlets, the blaze was sparked by a strike from Ukrainian long-range drones—marking the third fire at this facility in just a month and at least the fourth Ukrainian attack on Russian oil infrastructure in the past week. Video footage from the region showed thick columns of smoke billowing from one of Russia’s largest refineries, underscoring the escalating energy war between Kyiv and Moscow.
This latest attack is part of a widening campaign by Ukraine to hit Russian energy assets far from the front lines. The Ufa refinery, deep in the southern Ural Mountains, is a key cog in Russia’s oil industry. Ukrainian forces also struck a gas processing facility and a massive pumping station in the Volgograd region overnight on Thursday, October 9, with the latter boasting an annual capacity of 50 million tons, according to Ukrainian special forces. These strikes are no accident—they’re a deliberate effort by Kyiv to disrupt Russia’s war machine as both sides brace for the hardships of winter.
But the energy war cuts both ways. In retaliation, Russia has unleashed a punishing barrage of missiles and drones targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. On Saturday, over 240,000 homes in the Odesa region were left without power, and more than 800,000 customers in Kyiv experienced outages, according to Ukraine’s energy ministry. The country’s largest private energy company, DTEK, reported that two employees were wounded in Russian strikes on a substation in the Kyiv region, as per Governor Mykola Kalashnyk. Infrastructure in Donetsk, Odesa, and Chernihiv was also hit, compounding the widespread blackouts and damage.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a series of statements and social media posts, painted a stark picture of the scale of Russian attacks. "Russia continues its aerial terror against our cities and communities, intensifying strikes on our energy infrastructure," he wrote on X. Over the last week alone, Zelensky said, Russia launched more than 3,100 drones, 92 missiles, and around 1,360 glide bombs over Ukraine—a tempo of assault that has left the country’s grid battered and millions at risk as the cold season looms.
Ukraine’s ability to strike back has grown dramatically, thanks to a new arsenal of locally produced drones and missiles capable of reaching more than 1,000 kilometers inside Russian territory. President Zelensky recently noted that Russia’s gasoline shortage has reached "up to around 20% of its needs," attributing this in part to the deployment of two home-made cruise missiles in recent strikes. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi reported that Ukraine struck Russia 70 times in September alone, targeting fuel and military-industrial production to sap Moscow’s capacity to wage war.
Yet, the cost to Ukraine is enormous. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the Russian strikes on October 10 as "one of the largest concentrated strikes specifically against energy facilities," resulting in significant damage. The barrage included 465 drones and 32 missiles, part of a broader campaign that, on October 5, saw Moscow launch more than 50 missiles and nearly 500 drones at Ukrainian targets. Each year since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, the Kremlin has tried to cripple Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter, hoping to erode public morale during the bitter cold months from late October through March.
Ukraine’s energy sector is now under relentless pressure. President Zelensky revealed that there are 203 key facilities in Ukraine that urgently need protection with air defense systems. He renewed his appeal for more Western air defenses, noting that current Ukrainian systems are "about 74% effective" but still insufficient to shield the country’s sprawling infrastructure from massed attacks. The latest wave of strikes has forced Kyiv to confront the prospect of severe winter shortages, as domestic demand for gas typically spikes from November onward.
To fill the looming gap, Ukraine is negotiating with international partners to increase natural gas imports by about 30%. Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk confirmed that Ukraine has already secured €800 million ($930 million) in credits from European institutions and is in talks to expand these loans. An industry source estimated that Ukraine will need more than 4 billion cubic meters of additional gas by winter’s end, costing around $2 billion at current market rates—a staggering sum for a country under siege. Most of these imports are expected to come from Europe, where gas storage facilities were at 83% capacity as of early October, according to the European Union.
The strategic stakes have also intensified on the diplomatic front. On Saturday, October 11, President Zelensky held a "very productive" phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, discussing air defense, resilience, long-range capabilities, and the energy sector. Zelensky called for tighter secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil, arguing, "Sanctions, tariffs, and joint actions against the buyers of Russian oil—those who finance this war—must all remain on the table." Their conversation followed earlier talks about bolstering Ukraine’s defenses, and Zelensky later told Fox News that discussions with U.S. officials about the possible provision of Tomahawk cruise missiles and ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles were ongoing. "We work on it. Of course we count on such decisions, but we will see. We will see," he said.
President Trump, for his part, has signaled that he’s "sort of made a decision" on whether to send Tomahawks to Ukraine, but he has not elaborated publicly. The prospect of U.S. long-range missiles entering the conflict has rattled Moscow. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television that "the topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern." Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, tried to tamp down fears, suggesting that the U.S. was unlikely to deliver Tomahawks to Ukraine immediately. "I think we need to calm down in this regard. Our friend Donald… sometimes he takes a more forceful approach, and then, his tactic is to let go a little and step back. Therefore, we shouldn’t take this literally, as if it’s going to fly tomorrow," Lukashenko said in comments released Sunday.
Meanwhile, the air war rages on. Ukraine’s air force reported intercepting or jamming 103 of 118 Russian drones launched overnight from October 11 to 12, while Russia claimed to have shot down 32 Ukrainian drones over its own territory. The back-and-forth strikes on energy infrastructure have become the defining feature of this phase of the war, with both sides seeking to sap each other’s will and capacity to fight as winter approaches.
As the days grow shorter and temperatures drop, the battle for energy security is likely to intensify. For millions of civilians on both sides of the border, the coming months promise hardship and uncertainty, shaped by the relentless logic of war and the cold calculus of survival.
