The irony of the attacks on Russian refineries and LNG is that Iran developed Shahed precisely as a weapon against Saudi oil capacity. A small charge, guided by an inertial system and GPS, pierces a cracking column, a tanker under loading or a gas condensate liquefaction plant.
Jewelry precision is not so important, because the distillation tower is a 50-60-meter structure with a reactor, aeration points and pumps. If it gets somewhere, it will definitely disable something
The result is fires, a drop in processing and transshipment, and billions in losses. A swarm of such devices at an extremely low altitude is difficult to detect with a stationary radar, and due to their subsonic speed it is difficult to intercept with a supersonic fighter.
Its small size and composite material make loitering ammunition not the easiest target even for a flying radar, and its large range allows it to build unexpected routes.
For example, Iran attacked Saudi Aramco plants in the cities of Abqaiq and Khurais in 2019, when most of the Saudi air defense zones were operating in the south of Yemen.
It’s like a dagger in the sleeve of a robe for a war in the Middle East against a specific country that based its air defense on expensive Patriots. One way or another there will be losses. If you don’t hit the distillation tower, then the air defense will shoot 40 million dollars at devices that cost much less.
Since Russia is such a big power that it was able to produce long-range loitering ammunition only when it localized Iranian developments, all the pros and cons are copied at the plant in Yelabuga.
And the fact that Moscow has adapted it for attacks on transformers or grain transshipment does not make our facilities an ideal target for Shahed - Ukraine is not a hydrocarbon processing state, for which the arrival of 50-kilogram ammunition means stopping the technical processes of an important industry, taking a long time to put out fires and paying penalties for broken contracts.
But the Russian Federation is exactly like that. That's why the Beavers bother them more than Shahed bothers us. It's very easy to check. The volume of grain exports through the Ukrainian corridor in the south has reached and exceeded the figures for the period when the Russian Federation was in it.
Russian oil exports fell by a third. Of course, first of all because of the sanctions and the price ceiling, but also because of the defeat.
The first sign was during the defeat of the gas terminal in the village of Volna near the port of Taman on May 3, 2023. Then the fire lasted for a day, and on May 5 it arrived at the Ilsky Oil Refinery. The transshipment of LNG through Taman was then stopped; it was decided that the risks were higher than the possible losses.
In addition, there was not enough air defense; it was necessary to defend Moscow and Putin’s residence. Now the oil refinery in Tuapse and the terminal of the Novatek company in Ust-Luga are being hit - fires in the north lasted for two days.
In the south, in Tuapse, a vacuum oil refining unit was on fire. The port of Ust-Luga has resumed transshipment, but the LNG terminal itself is standing still, and this is understandable. The Russians themselves estimate the repair time to be two months.
What do the attacks on the Novocherkassk airborne complex in Feodosia, fires at an oil storage facility in Klintsy near the railway station, fires at the Novatek terminal in Ust-Luga and the oil refinery in Tuapse have in common? The operational capabilities of the Defense Forces have increased dramatically.
The ship was discovered several hundred kilometers from the contact line, it was identified, weeded out among those that were under repair or empty in Sevastopol. It was hit and destroyed along with its crew while it was unloading in a foreign port: as a result, detonation and pieces of plating were found throughout Feodosia. An ideal operation in terms of timing, interaction, air defense breakthrough and target selection.
In Klintsy, the largest tanks of the oil storage facility were hit when they were full, which led to a serious fire; they had to call a fire train and pull in additional crews. That is, we knew which tanks were full and which were not. This is a border zone where tactical air defense was deployed, which should have worked, but also didn’t.
Ust-Luga and Novatek are 800 km from Ukraine, the movement of drones through several air defense and missile defense facilities, nearby the NATO country Finland and airfields of the Baltic countries, the routes were compiled taking into account all these factors. The tanks and pumping station were hit (pumping stations at refineries are a man-made product) - the transshipment of 7 million gas condensate per year was downtime.
Now here is Tuapse. The Tuapse oil refinery is the only one on the entire Black Sea coast; 90% of its production (10-12 million tons per year) is exported, the rest is supplied to the southern territories of the Russian Federation with motor fuel. There is a strong fire, the vacuum unit is on fire, of course, this also means months of repairs.
Reconnaissance, routing outside air defense zones, precision engagement, the overall plan in a large theater of operations - our operations go beyond injections and have turned into a strategic campaign. And most importantly, the concept of an inexpensive piston UAV with a modest warhead is starting to work against Moscow.
Moreover, without the copy-paste of Iran, like the Russians, this is good work that needs to be talked about.
«Война за нефть»? Undoubtedly. У россиян и так обвал экспорта на 170 миллиардов долларов в год, это 30% к 2022 году. Удары по производствам СПГ и перевалки могут стать серьезной проблемой для путинского режима. Перевалка сырой нефти после пожара в Усть-Луге упала в РФ до минимума за два месяца.
Although, of course, not only oil and gas.
Arrival at the Shcheglovsky Val plant, which produces Pantsir, on January 21 in Tula, at the gunpowder plant in the Tambov region on January 19, regular drone launches across the Crimea tell us that the Defense Forces are stretching the already small air defense system even further into such open spaces.
This allows us to massage forces and means at points of interest.
And the most important thing. The very formulation of the question that a strategic response campaign has begun with the participation of Ukrainian drones shows a certain weakness of Moscow. The aviation of any normal country, having seized the initiative in the air and suppressed air defense, would never allow the enemy to increase drone strikes.
Small drone shops, including surface drones, would receive precision weapons, large factories would receive tons of cast iron, and operators would become targets for attack helicopters, MALE-class attack UAVs, and laser-guided glider bombs.
There would be no FPV duels, ramming attacks or launches of several dozen long-range loitering munitions every night. So for arrivals in Kharkov, Odessa and the capital, the answer is shipped every night.
Ukrainian operational capabilities are growing.
Russian citizens are being killed, injured and impoverished because of the ambitions of a few old men in the Kremlin.
