Sollte die Ukraine weiterhin russische Ölraffinerien angreifen? Debatte über Kosten und Nutzen der neuen Taktik Kiews

[SS from response by, Sergey Vakulenko]

Writing in May [in *Foreign Affairs*](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/why-ukraine-should-keep-striking-russian-oil-refineries#author-info), Michael Liebreich, Lauri Myllyvirta, and Sam Winter-Levy argued that Ukraine should keep launching drone attacks on Russian oil refineries—and that the United States should not discourage it from doing so. They cited declines in Russia’s refined oil exports and export revenues, high wholesale gasoline and diesel prices in Russia, and Russia’s move to import 3,000 tons of fuel from Belarus to illustrate that the attacks have had a dramatic impact. Because the attacks have not yet driven a spike in global oil prices, the authors asserted, they carry relatively low risk and a high reward.

But a thorough cost-benefit analysis does not, in fact, suggest that the rewards have been significant—or that the costs to Ukraine will remain low. Since October, Ukraine has launched at least 20 attacks on Russian refineries. By now, substantial information has emerged from the Russian government’s weekly reports on gasoline and diesel production levels and prices that can be cross-checked against independent price-comparison websites, wholesale prices from commodity exchanges, and export values from ship-tracking services. It is crucial to contextualize this data in longer-term and international price trends to avoid falsely attributing changes to the Ukrainian attacks or attaching too much importance to the amplitude of any given change.

Russia under Putin became something like a huge petrostate, at least in terms of exports. This is hitting the elites where it hurts. Will it hurt oil consumers in other countries too? I think the world has seen worse, and other oil producers have had so much time to prepare that there won’t be a shock.