In the early hours of November 14, 2025, the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk jolted awake to the sound of explosions and the sight of flames licking the night sky. According to Splash, Ukrainian forces had mounted a large drone strike on the city, damaging a ship in port, hitting apartment blocks, and igniting a blaze at the Sheskharis oil terminal—one of Russia’s most critical energy export hubs. Three crewmembers aboard a civilian vessel were injured by falling UAV debris and rushed to the hospital, while drone fragments shattered windows in at least four apartment buildings. Thankfully, no civilian casualties were reported, but the psychological shock was palpable for residents and port workers alike.
Emergency teams managed to bring the fire at the Sheskharis transshipment complex under control, but satellite fire-monitoring data reviewed by maritime security firm Ambrey showed multiple heat signatures around the port, suggesting the extent of the damage may have been greater than Russian officials admitted. Unverified footage circulating on Russian social media depicted large explosions, dense smoke, and flames engulfing parts of the terminal. Ambrey confirmed that one of the explosions occurred in a container yard, damaging a crane and several containers, and that a non-sanctioned container ship docked at the terminal suffered collateral damage.
This strike on Novorossiysk was not an isolated incident. It followed a string of Ukrainian attacks on Russian Black Sea ports in recent weeks, including a significant UAV and maritime drone strike on Tuapse, another vital refinery and export terminal. That attack set storage tanks ablaze and temporarily brought operations to a halt. Satellite imagery from the time showed widespread fire damage, though Russian authorities sought to downplay the disruption. Tuapse, which boasts a processing capacity of 240,000 barrels per day, has been hit multiple times this year, reflecting its importance to Russia’s oil export network and naval resupply chain.
Analysts have noted a clear pattern: Ukraine is targeting high-value coastal assets far from the front line, including infrastructure near Feodosia, Sevastopol, and the Kerch peninsula. According to RBC-Ukraine, the Novorossiysk strike may have also hit an S-300/400 air defense position, further raising the stakes for Moscow’s military planners. The port is the endpoint of pipelines operated by state-owned Transneft and is Russia’s second-largest oil export hub, handling crude from the CPC pipeline, refined products, and grain. The attack sent oil prices up roughly 2% on Friday, with Reuters quoting senior oil market analyst June Goh: “This port is the second-largest oil export hub in Russia and comes on the heels of another major attack at Tuapse barely two weeks ago.”
Ukraine’s campaign is not limited to the Black Sea. In September, Kyiv expanded its reach to the Baltic Sea, striking Russia’s Primorsk oil terminal—the final station of the Baltic Pipeline System and a major hub for the so-called "shadow fleet" of sanction-evading tankers. Pumping stations feeding the Ust-Luga terminal were also struck, underscoring that Kyiv is now targeting every major artery of Russia’s export network within reach of its drones and cruise missiles.
Despite the scale and frequency of these attacks, Russia’s oil industry has demonstrated a surprising resilience. According to Reuters, even after Ukrainian strikes knocked 20% of Russia’s refinery capacity offline between August and October, total output was cut by only 3-6%. The reason? Moscow has relied heavily on idle units to absorb the damage, restarting spare capacity at both damaged and undamaged plants, and bringing attacked units back online as repairs were completed. As of October, refining output had fallen to around 5.1 million barrels per day—about 300,000 barrels less than the same period in 2024. From January to October 2025, oil processing fell to roughly 220 million metric tons (5.2 million barrels per day), a modest 3% decrease from the previous year.
Most of Ukraine’s attacks occurred in early 2025 and then resumed with renewed intensity in August. According to Reuters and the UK-based Open Source Centre, Ukraine has launched at least 58 attacks on Russian energy facilities since August, with drones reaching targets up to 2,000 kilometers inside Russian territory. Major refineries in Ryazan, Volgograd, Saratov, Tuapse, Ufa, Astrakhan, Novokuibyshevsk, Kirishi, and Salavat have all been hit. The Saratov oil refinery on the Volga river, for example, was forced to cease primary oil refining operations on November 11 after Ukrainian drone strikes caused explosions and a significant blaze, including a large reservoir igniting. The refinery’s main processing unit, CDU-6, which handles 147,000 barrels daily, was possibly damaged, potentially prolonging the shutdown and affecting 2.2% of Russia’s oil output, as reported by Reuters.
Western sanctions have further complicated Russia’s ability to repair and maintain its refineries. Many of the country’s modern refining systems depend on Western technology and spare parts, which are now difficult to obtain. Russian firms claim to have substituted domestic components or imports from China, but repairs remain costly and sometimes require more time, raising questions about how long Russia can continue to rely on unused capacity if strikes persist. According to industry sources cited by Reuters, repairs have generally allowed distillation units to return within weeks, but the cumulative effect of repeated attacks may eventually test the limits of Russia’s workaround strategy.
The economic consequences of Ukraine’s campaign are starting to show. The International Energy Agency reported that Russia’s crude and oil product income in August fell to one of the lowest levels since the war began. President Volodymyr Zelensky asserted last month that long-range strikes may have reduced gasoline supplies in Russia by up to a fifth. The Kremlin, for its part, maintains that the domestic fuel market remains stable, but Russia’s oil export revenues slipped to $13.4 billion in September 2025, down about $0.2 billion from the previous month, according to the KSE Institute. New U.S. sanctions on Lukoil and Rosneft have unsettled buyers in China, India, and Turkey, reducing Russian crude purchases and leaving nearly a billion barrels idling at sea.
Ukraine’s strategy is clear: degrade the Kremlin’s combat power on the frontlines while raising the economic costs of war by undermining Russia’s ability to finance its mobilization through energy exports. Kyiv’s domestically produced Flamingo cruise missile, reportedly used in recent strikes, signals expanding deep-strike capabilities and the growing scale of damage it can inflict. As the tempo of attacks on energy infrastructure increases, Moscow faces increasingly costly decisions about what to protect with its already stretched air defenses.
While the full impact of Ukraine’s drone and missile campaign remains to be seen, one thing is certain: the battle for control of energy infrastructure is now a central front in the wider war. With both sides locked in a high-stakes contest of resilience and adaptation, the coming months promise further escalation and uncertainty for global energy markets and the people whose lives are shaped by them.