Ukraine’s U.S.-Engineered Drone War Against Russia Turned the Tide.

23 July 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Back on 30 January 2025, I headlined “A Possible Turnabout in the Ukraine War”, and, by now, it clearly was and is a “turnabout.” At that time, as I reported,

At least 11% of Russia’s total annual oil-refinery and storage capacity has been disabled by swarms of drones from Ukraine that have blown them up during the past two months. 11 Russian oil refineries and storage facilities, all within 1,500 miles of Ukraine, have been hit in the past 60 days, and the 73 Russian refineries that have not been hit are beyond that distance. But potentially, 20% or more of Russia’s oil could become eliminated in this way.

Today, the Financial Times bannered “Russia forced to import fuel from India as Ukrainian strikes damage refineries: Shipment underlines crisis facing Moscow after drone attacks cut supplies and led to widespread shortages”, and opened

Russia is set to receive a shipment of fuel from India, as Moscow is forced to import petrol after Ukrainian drone attacks destroyed parts of its major refineries.

The shipment underlines the severity of Russia’s fuel shortages after the strikes cut domestic refining capacity by about 40 per cent, prompting one of the world’s largest petrostates to seek relief from abroad.

A tanker carrying 42,000 tonnes of petrol which originated in India’s Vadinar refinery is due to reach Beloye More, an oil terminal in northern Russia, on Sunday, according to data from analytics company Kpler.

Regions across Russia introduced some form of restriction on petrol sales per person this month, after Kyiv’s strikes triggered the worst fuel crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. People have had to queue for hours or days to secure fuel in some areas, with the crisis affecting around 50mn Russians, according to an FT estimate.

Moscow officially announced a plan to import fuel in late June, as long queues began forming at petrol stations across the country.

The fuel cargo from the Vadinar refinery was first loaded on to a vessel called Agni at Vadinar on June 18, Kpler data showed.

The tanker transferred its entire cargo to the Garnet at Damietta Light, off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, on July 6, the data showed. As of July 22, the Garnet was sailing north along the Norwegian coast.

The shipment from India due to reach Russia this week appears to be the biggest single batch of imported petrol since the fuel crisis erupted © Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

Vadinar is owned by India’s Nayara Energy, in which Russia’s state-controlled Rosneft holds a 49 per cent stake. According to Kpler data, more than 90 per cent of the crude processed at Vadinar in 2026 has come from Russia, adding to the irony of refined Russian crude flowing back from the country that has become its main seaborne importer since 2022.

Nayara said it “has neither sold nor has any plans to sell fuel to Russian companies”, and that it “remains committed to serving the Indian market and meeting the demand for fuels across the length and breadth of India”.

Reuters reported in early July that at least 60,000 tonnes of petrol had been dispatched from India to Russia, equivalent to about 60 per cent of the country’s daily consumption.

The shipment from India due to reach Russia this week appears to be the largest single batch of imported petrol since the fuel crisis erupted, but it is not the only source of foreign fuel Russia is now using.

Belarus, which mainly refines Russian crude, has also significantly increased its petrol sales to Moscow. In June, it sold Russia 184,000 tonnes, a threefold increase month on month and a 184-fold increase year on year, according to Russia-based Price Benchmark Centre data shared with the FT. …

Though this still hasn’t yet turned the tide against Russia on the front lines in the war in Ukraine, it has definitely forced Russia’s hand to either suddenly increase the intensity of its missile attacks against Ukraine or extend those attacks into the NATO countries that are supplying the means for Ukraine to do this, or else negotiate with Ukraine. However, doing the latter would mean that none of the three objectives that Putin had stated to the Russian people in his speech in 24 February 2022 when he ordered this invasion in order to prevent a U.S. nuclear missile from ever becoming positioned a mere 300 miles away from The Kremlin and thus checkmating Russia and forcing it to become yet another U.S. colony has been achieved. So, that would be unacceptable — both to Putin and to the Russian people. Consequently, Russia now is faced with the very real prospect of having to choose either to speed up its war and determine to take the whole country, or else to start bombing NATO country(s). The former seems to be the likelier. An acceleration of Russia’s involvement in that war is thus to be expected.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.