Collins Research Portal

Full slide deck available here: Gabriel Collins, “Physical Sanctions Beat Out Paper Sanctions: Ukraine’s Strike Campaign Against Russia’s Oil Industry,” Collins Research Portal, 26 September 2025. https://collinsresearchportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Ukraine-Campaign-Against-Russian-Oil-and-Energy-Sector_26-September-2025.pdf

Ukraine is dramatically ramping up its strike campaign against Russia’s oil industry. A confluence of several factors drives this evolution. First, paper sanctions by the US and EU are not succeeding. Three years after their full imposition, Russia still has the cash to run a significant war machine. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put it in his nightly address to the country on September 14: “The most effective sanctions — the sanctions that work the fastest — are fires in Russian oil refineries, at their terminals and oil depots.”

Second, Ukraine’s indigenous long-range strike programs are coming to fuller fruition–meaning that Kyiv can now launch strikes more than 1,000 km into Russia without having to seek Washington’s permission. Ukrainian sources say the FP-1, which can carry a 60kg warhead as far as the Urals Mountains, is now being produced at a rate of approximately 100 units per day. Ukraine is also making progress on missile programs and “jet drone” platforms like the Peklo and Palantsyia that blur the line between fast drones and what would more traditionally be considered cruise missiles.

It is highly likely that jet-powered strike munitions are already in use. For instance, when I watched Telegram footage of a drone impact in Moscow during strikes a few days ago, the characteristic sound of a wailing piston engine and propeller was replaced by a short-lived roar and whoosh just before impact–traits more readily associated with a cruise missile in its terminal flight. As Peklo and other faster flying systems carrying larger warheads scale up, Ukraine’s potential to damage and destroy Russian energy infrastructure will go up commensurately.

Third, Ukraine is likely increasingly concluding that it will continue to receive various Western support but that insofar as war termination is concerned, only massive pressure will bring Russia to the negotiating table. Among the available options, crimping Russian oil and refined products cash flows from sales abroad while imposing domestic pain from fuel shortages is one that has real potential to be effective and one that Ukraine has the means to pursue with indigenous capabilities and maximum decision-making sovereignty.

So what might lie ahead?

A few core things. A fall and winter energy escalation is already underway and could well intensify. I expect Russia to again systematically target Ukraine’s electricity grid as temperatures fall. The dynamics are different with each passing month, as Ukraine will be increasingly able to respond in kind. If Ukrainian drones began blacking out major parts of Western and Southern Russia (where most of the population lives), the Kremlin will face unprecedented challenges because the war will truly have “come home to roost.” Being without gasoline is inconvenient but living without electricity is far more difficult, grating, and potentially, life-threatening.

Here’s a brief risk scorecard for the rest of 2025:

•Many more oil refinery strikes (almost 100% probability)

•Follow up strikes on largest plants

•Focus on Bashkortostan and Tatarstan to force upstream oil shut-ins and stoke tensions with central government in Moscow

•Intensified attacks to shut down the Black Sea export pipelines (other than CPC) as well as Druzhba Pipeline (85% probability by 31 December 2025)

•More systematic strikes on oil export pipelines feeding the Baltic ports (75% probability of intensification by 31 December 2025)

•Systematic strikes on Russian main power substations (65% probability of intensification by 31 December 2025, partially contingent on Russian strikes on Ukraine grid this winter)

•Systematic strikes on Russian power plants(50% probability of intensification by 31 December 2025, partially contingent on Russian strikes on Ukraine grid this winter)

•Strikes on the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline and Nakhodka Oil Port and supporting infrastructure (20% probability first strikes occur by 31 December 2025)