Responding to the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the Union of escalatory rhetoric, adding that Moscow would keep increasing pressure on the "Kyiv regime”, as the Kremlin calls the Ukrainian government.
Ukraine Keeps Up Its Strikes on Russian Oil
The Russian Ministry of Defense said the attacks targeted facilities belonging to the electronics company Radionics, which supplies navigation components for Fire Point's Flamingo long-range missiles. The contractor also supplies parts for the FP-7 and FP-9 cruise missiles, according to the TASS news agency. The attack was carried out in retaliation for the destruction of Russian refineries.
Moscow described the strike as a response to Wednesday's attack on a refinery in the city of Ufa, more than 1,300 km from the front line. Kyiv has significantly expanded its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in recent months, targeting facilities that the West says finance the state treasury and, by extension, the military.
Thursday's strike on the Lukoil refinery in Kstovo, however, confirms that Ukraine's military has stuck to its new tactics and intends to keep striking strategic targets deep inside Russian territory. In late June, Ukrainian forces also attacked two refineries in the historic Cossack region of Kuban.
With the Advance Stalled, Russia Turns to the Rear
The Russian army has, in recent months, been unable to resume even the advance it made last year, when it slowly captured one city after another in the Donetsk region. Even General Andriy Biletsky recently suggested that Kyiv could preserve the unoccupied part of the Donbas if it maintains its drone superiority.
When Russian forces stalled, Moscow shifted tactics again and turned to missile and drone strikes on mostly civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. The first such attack last month left 22 dead and more than 130 injured in Kyiv and Dnipro, and Ukraine responded by destroying a refinery in the city of Ilsky, in the Kuban region.
Zelensky described the shift as part of a 40-day operation aimed at "punishing the aggressor state”. The destruction of the oil facilities has forced Moscow to import gasoline from India, even as it continues to export crude oil there for processing.
As drone warfare has spread into Russian territory, it has so far hit hardest the internationally unrecognized Republic of Crimea, which Russia unilaterally annexed in 2014. Ukrainian forces have repeatedly targeted power plants, the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea and the Stavropol region and the M-14 highway along the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Kyiv had already come under Russian attack on 8 June and again on 15 June, when a strike hit the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, a significant Kyiv-Russian historical site. Western observers attributed this attack, too, to Moscow's growing desperation following the halt of its advance.
Thursday's attack once again involved a scale of projectiles that would typically make front pages under the headline "the largest attack”. Moscow has gradually increased its drone numbers over the past year, straining Ukraine's air defenses, and briefly eliminated Ukraine's drone superiority in November of last year.
The Russian attack in mid-May was larger in scale (more than 670 drones compared with about 500 in early July) and claimed a total of 10 lives. The current death toll of 17 therefore represents a significant increase in civilian casualties.
The key to understanding the success of Russian attacks lies in the use of ballistic or cruise missiles, which strike selected targets unimpeded once air defense systems have been exhausted. This is one reason why Kyiv is increasingly relying on domestically produced Flamingo missiles, and it is also why the Russians attacked the factory producing components for them.
