Deep in the Ukrainian countryside, under a dome of stars, soldiers carried out final inspections of drones, each with a 24-foot wingspan and 110 pounds of explosives, and launched them toward Russia. The group’s commander watched through night-vision goggles as they faded into the darkness.
“In the morning, you will read that an oil refinery is on fire,” said the commander, identified by only his call sign, Casper, for security reasons.
Most nights since August, soldiers like these have wheeled long-range drones into an ever-changing set of open fields and let them fly, targeting refineries and trying to inflict pain on Russia and its oil economy in ways that Western sanctions have not done so far. With Russia gaining ground on the battlefield, Ukrainians hope that this campaign, using weapons and tactics that did not even exist when Russia invaded in 2022, will help persuade President Vladimir V. Putin to end the war at last.
“The most effective sanctions, the ones that work the fastest, are the fires at Russia’s oil refineries,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said last month. On Monday, Mr. Zelensky said he would meet on Friday with President Trump at the White House as Ukraine has been seeking more American weapons to strike Russia, including Tomahawk missiles.
One recent night, The New York Times had rare access to a long-range drone battalion, on the condition that reporters not disclose even a general region, how many drones took off or how many soldiers tended to them. Though far from the front, the troops worked in full body armor and helmets, knowing that at any moment, if their location were detected, they could be targeted by a Russian ballistic missile.
“Russia is hunting us,” Casper said.
Analysts say the drone campaign is not a decisive blow to Russia, but it is hurting ordinary Russians, and even an autocrat like Mr. Putin keeps an eye on public opinion.
By last month, Ukraine had blown up or damaged refining equipment capable of processing 1.5 million barrels of crude per day, or about 20 percent of the country’s refining capacity, according to Avanpal Sehmi Singh, a research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
Increasingly severe gasoline shortages have hit multiple regions of Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, and the price is up about 40 percent since the beginning of the year. Filling stations have limited purchases to five gallons per driver — and in some cases run out of gasoline entirely, selling only diesel, Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported.
Kommersant, a leading Russian business news outlet, said in late September that half of the stations in Russian-occupied Crimea had stopped selling gasoline. Other news media have reported people waiting overnight in lines at the pump.
The government has prohibited exports of gasoline since midsummer to address the problem, but it has not acknowledged any cause for the shortage.
Russian forces have hammered at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — power plants, transmission lines and gas pipelines — on and off since the war began, in an apparent effort to stifle Ukraine’s economy and make life difficult for its people. On Friday, a large attack plunged parts of Kyiv, the capital, and other cities into darkness.
As the war has continued, Moscow has ramped up a much bigger drone industry than Ukraine’s and has bombarded Ukraine much more intensively, often striking cities and civilian sites with no apparent military value. With a smaller arsenal, the Ukrainians are forced to be more selective in their targets, and they want to show their Western allies that they are not indiscriminately causing destruction and civilian casualties.
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Ukraine’s leaders have long argued that Mr. Putin would not seriously consider ending the fighting unless Russia suffered more severe economic pain. But Mr. Trump has so far not ramped up sanctions, despite Mr. Putin’s rebuff of Mr. Trump’s proposal for peace talks with Mr. Zelensky.
Some of the most important Western sanctions have tried to restrict Russia’s export of fossil fuels, its main source of revenue to support its government and finance the war. But those exports are mostly crude oil and natural gas. Refined oil products like gasoline and diesel are a much smaller part of the picture.
As a result, striking the refineries hits Russian people’s lifestyles and expenses, but does not cut deeply into the flow of money to the Kremlin.
Moscow will not allow fuel shortages to affect the military, but hitting refineries is an effective strategy for Ukraine, said Vladislav Inozemtsev, an economist focused on Russia and a founder of the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe. Russia does little to protect refineries with air defenses, and they are full of flammable liquids, amplifying the effect.
