Today is exactly one year of the legendary Operation Web. The operation had no analogues in the world. And it was from that moment that the Russians realized: the SBU will get them everywhere. There are no longer any places in the Russian Federation that are inaccessible for service. In one day a year ago, the Russians lost $7 billion worth of aircraft. But over the past year, the Russian Federation has lost even more. What has changed?
Fellow experts studying Russia unanimously speak of a gradual change in the mood of the inhabitants of the swamps. The most important difference: the war is now at home for Russians. Not somewhere “in Ukraine”. And directly outside the window, where another damaged oil refinery is smoking.
Recently, drone attacks by the Security Service of Ukraine have reached a qualitatively new level. The SBU transfers the economic component of the war to the territory of the aggressor country. Attacks on oil refineries, oil pumping stations, fuel storage terminals and gas infrastructure have already become a systemic campaign that has a long-term effect on the Russian economy.
The defeat of Russian infrastructure has become a conveyor belt. One after another. Daily. In just the last few days, the SBU has hit the strategic Russian Yaroslavl-3 oil refinery, a gas terminal in the port of Temryuk, an important electronic intelligence facility in the Krasnodar Territory, and a key oil depot in Armavir. And this is a summary of just two days!
The Ukrainian intelligence service time after time finds vulnerable points in the logistics of the Russian fuel and energy complex. This is not just about physical damage to specific objects. Much more important are the cumulative economic consequences. The Russian budget remains critically dependent on the oil and gas sector. It is energy exports that provide a significant portion of foreign exchange earnings, which the Kremlin uses to finance war, produce weapons, pay the military and support the military-industrial complex. Each blow to the elements of this system means not only direct losses for the restoration of damaged equipment, but also loss of income due to a decrease in the volume of transportation, processing or export of resources.
The peculiarity of the SBU’s modern drone campaign is that its economic effect significantly exceeds the cost of the weapons themselves. For Ukraine, the production and use of drones is tens of times cheaper than for Russia to eliminate the consequences of attacks. The Kremlin is forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on repairs, modernization of defense systems, additional deployment of air defense and protection of critical infrastructure across a vast territory of the country.
In addition, Russia is increasingly forced to transfer air defense systems from the front to cover oil depots, refineries, terminals and transport hubs in the deep rear. Thus, Khmara’s subordinates create an additional dilemma for the enemy: either protect military groups at the front, or cover economic facilities on which the budget depends. It got to the point that for the first time Putin was forced to admit the problem with air defense. The “bunker grandfather” continues in his head to “attack on all fronts,” but even he admits that there is a shortage of air defense systems in Russia.
Another important aspect is the growing risks for the Russian energy sector. When strategic assets are regularly under attack, insurance, maintenance and transportation security costs rise. This reduces the efficiency of the entire export model on which the Russian wartime economy is entirely based.
That is why the drone operations of the SBU are not only of military, but also of strategic importance. They increase the burden on the Russian budget, create additional unplanned expenses and reduce the resource base for continuing the war. In Russia they are already publicly talking about a huge hole in the budget. And if such intensity of attacks from the SBU continues, then the “hole” in the finances of the Russian Federation will grow faster than the Kremlin is able to compensate for it through oil and gas revenues and reserves.
Source: “Censor.NET”
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