The Wall Street Journal reports:

Denys Shtylerman was surprised how many of his company’s drones were getting through as he watched footage of them slamming into an oil refinery on the edge of Moscow last week, sending plumes of black smoke billowing over the Russian capital.

“We just used a big bunch of drones and they overwhelmed the Russian air-defense systems,” Shtylerman, the head designer at Fire Point, one of Ukraine’s largest defense manufacturers, said in an interview.

Ukraine is swamping Russia’s air defenses with a growing armada of long-range drones that target refineries, port infrastructure, military industries and those air defenses themselves.

The escalating campaign is leading to restrictions on fuel sales in Russia, surging gasoline prices and regular images of black smoke clouds over parts of the country that thought the war in Ukraine was far away.

On Thursday, Ukraine hit two oil refineries in Ufa, a city in Russia that is over 930 miles from the front line, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social-media post.

Ukraine’s cities have been under fire from Russian missiles and drones since the fall of 2022. When Moscow began its strategic bombing campaign, it aimed at breaking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, military-related industries and will to continue the country’s defense. Since last year, the Russian barrages have inflicted a rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Ukraine has been trying to hit back for over two years, targeting primarily Russia’s oil infrastructure to hurt its economy, government finances and military logistics. But a lack of long-range firepower has limited Kyiv’s efforts.

This year, Ukraine is producing more and better long-range drones, and is adding domestically made cruise missiles to the mix—inflicting growing damage deep inside Russia. Since March, more than two dozen strikes on Russian oil refineries have knocked out some 20% of the country’s refining capacity, analysts estimate. [Continue reading…]