Since early August 2025, Ukraine has been conducting a long-range bombing campaign targeting the oil and gas industry infrastructure that fuels the Russian war economy. This air offensive has proved highly successful, leading to reduced export revenues and gasoline shortages across Russia. However, while what many Ukrainians refer to as “drone sanctions” are clearly adding to the Kremlin’s economic woes, this is unlikely to spark any kind of meaningful domestic Russian opposition to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Instead, progress toward peace will depend on sustained external pressure from Kyiv and its international partners.
While the Kremlin is understandably eager to conceal the scale of the damage caused by Ukraine’s energy sector attacks, there can be little question that the strikes conducted in recent months are bringing Putin’s invasion home to ordinary Russians. In early October, the Paris-based International Energy Agency downgraded its outlook for Russia and assessed that the impact from Ukrainian drone strikes will suppress Russia’s refinery processing rates until at least mid-2026. Meanwhile, car owners across Russia are being forced to queue for gasoline amid supply issues not witnessed since the dark days of the early 1990s.
The current wave of fuel shortages is undermining Kremlin efforts to shield the Russian population from the negative consequences of the war in Ukraine. Putin has been careful to limit the impact of the invasion on ordinary Russians, with military recruitment concentrated on disadvantaged regions of the country, prison populations, and financially motivated volunteers. This approach is very much in line with the unwritten ‘social contract’ that has evolved during the 25 years of Putin’s reign, whereby he offers the Russian public higher living standards in exchange for curtailed personal freedoms and political passivity.
The so-called social contract between Putin and the Russian population had already begun to unravel long before the present wave of Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy industry. Over the past three and a half years, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has resulted in military losses unseen in Europe since World War II. At least one million Russianshave been killed or wounded in the conflict, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense and other international sources.
Voice of Ukraine 