04/08/2026

The attack on the night of April 5 is not just mosquito bites, our ranged ammunition has been stinging well for a long time, but a full-fledged strategic operation to take out their export and industrial circulatory system. This is our reaction to the rise in prices for mother oil. We assessed the previous waves of UAVs, conducted additional reconnaissance and determined priority targets, writes Kyrylo Danylchenko for LB.ua.

The Russian Defense Ministry, of course, cheerfully reported that it had shot down a bunch of drones, but when the “safe burning of the debris” begins, you have to look at where exactly it is burning. And we hit very hard and in a targeted manner.

Baltic hub: paralysis of Primorsky

In the Baltics, the infrastructure of the Primorsk port was once again hit. An oil pipeline was breached, and while their governor is whining about some debris, the burning out of the blocked pipe continues. Plus, they paralyzed the sky over St. Petersburg, and this is damage to the economy.

Primorsk is their most important hub in the Baltic, so the pipe stop affects the entire logistics chain. For about five days, tankers did not load at all, then from the surviving tanks (we burned about 30% of the storage capacity) they threw infrastructure from the shore and began to fill more slowly. Well, with the fire-covered blocked pipe, which leads to the port in general, it is problematic to do this. And if you boil it here – we will cut it further south.

Volga region and chemical warfare

Then the Volga region. About 30 drones went exclusively to the Nizhny Novgorod region, where the long-suffering refinery in Kstovo and the Novogorkivsk CHPP were hit. The plant was barely breathing anyway, and a strike on a CHPP is a classic: de-energize the industrial zone to stop production. The chemical plant in Tolyatti was also hit. 

The main blow at the end of March fell on the infrastructure of Togliattiazot, one of the world’s largest ammonia producers.

And here again, our favorite surgical tactic worked: we hit precisely at the gas distribution nodes and imported compressor stations that cool and pump ammonia under extreme pressure. Destroying these compressors is like tearing the heart out of the production cycle.

Chemical warfare is always a priority: to attack, you need a lot of drones, shells, and iron – everything is being consumed at a wild pace. No precursors to explosives – no effective offensive.

TNT : Toluene and nitric acid are required for its cooking (nitration).

Hexogen ( RDX ) and octogen: the basis of all modern powerful warheads, from ballistic missiles to “shaheeds.” They are also produced using nitric acid.

Gunpowder: The propellant charge of any artillery shot is nitrocellulose powder. Without nitric acid, cellulose cannot be nitrated, and the guns simply will not fire.

Plus fertilizers before sowing. Who said “they slaughtered cattle because of foot-and-mouth disease, fuel shortages, sanctions on spare parts for Western equipment, and fertilizers are a royal flush”?

As for Togliattikauchuk, which was hit during yesterday’s series of raids, this is another blow to their military logistics. It hit the gas fractionation units and polymerization reactors. This is a key link where complex high-temperature synthesis takes place. To destroy such a column or compressor station means to instantly stop the entire supply chain for their tire giants like Nizhnekamskshina. It is impossible to quickly replace these units, it means months of downtime and the loss of millions of dollars in export revenue. There is no rubber of its own – the army remains “bald”, it will have to milk the budget even more, buying overpriced Chinese rubber. 

South: Sheskharis Terminal Stop

But the most delicious thing is the south and Novorossiysk. The third wave on Sheskharis: hitting the barrels (tanks) is effective for a video on Telegram and for an immediate stop to extinguish and collapse, but hitting the pipe (distribution nodes and pumping stations) is effective for a long-term decline in the economy. This is exactly what was done at the Sheskharis oil terminal. The tank can be quickly extinguished, only one can will burn out. But the manifold or pumping station is the bottleneck of the entire terminal.

High-tech pumps and the brains of control systems are imports. Getting them now, bypassing sanctions, is a six-month quest for Sheskharis. You can weld a pipe, but you can’t replace powerful pumps.

The arrival was precisely in the area of ​​the Verkhny platform, where the pressure regulation and oil metering nodes are located (both Russian oil and the Kazakh CPC go through them). If you take out this node, a domino effect occurs: the terminal turns into a warehouse that quickly overflows, and you have to shut down wells somewhere in Siberia. 

Last month, previous waves of drone strikes had already cut their total shipments by nearly 450,000-500,000 barrels per day. The April 5 attack simply finished off their attempts to resume transshipment, completely paralyzing the surviving lines. Their shadow fleet is now deadlocked at the raid, losing tens of thousands of dollars a day to the threat of new arrivals. 

It also flew over piers number 1 and 2 – there is a strong fire there, which means they hit the right spot, the piers themselves are generally not burning very much.

Macroeconomics and the air defense crisis

If we reduce everything to macroeconomics, then the cost of freight and insurance ( War Risk ) for entering Novorossiysk after this skyrockets several times – this is the “tax” on each of their barrels that they pay to insurers.  Brent  instantly reacts with volatility, and we see the best advertising for our (and Western) military-industrial complex. Any such failure in global logistics entails an increase in quotes in the EU defense industry, until Russian air defense openly charges for the protection of such vast areas.

The main reason for the crisis is that air defense missiles are not made like hotcakes. The cycle of one delivery vehicle for the S-300/S-400 is 6–8 months. You can’t scale electronics, because even the ones that are there are burning like “Stone El”. Now the shortage has reached even the missiles for the “Pantsir”. During yesterday’s raid, the cameras did not record a single missile launch.

The budget hole and the oil paradox

In January-February 2026 alone, the actual hole in the Russian budget reached 3.4–3.5 trillion rubles. This is more than 90% of the annual plan in just two months! March only worsened this picture. Market analysts are already openly predicting that at this rate, the deficit will easily break through the five trillion mark by the end of the year.

The main disadvantage for them now is the catastrophic fall in oil and gas revenues. In January 2026, they collapsed by half (minus 52% year-on-year). And here is the essence of our drone tactics: oil is expensive on world markets due to the war in the Middle East. It would seem that this is a jackpot for the Kremlin. But they physically cannot earn this money. Due to the burned-out terminals (Primorsk, Sheskharis) and the broken refineries, the volume of shipments has fallen sharply. And what they manage to export goes through the shadow fleet, which eats up the gigantic margin on logistics and insurance that has flown into space. Also, the constant arrests of ships by the Swedes or the French hit their pockets.

As a result, export revenue ends up with intermediaries in India and the Emirates, and pennies end up in the Russian federal budget.

Hidden crisis in the regions

The second major disadvantage is the regional budgets of the Russian Federation. The center sucks all the juice out of the defense budget, leaving the governors with a bare ass. Even Moscow, which is always bloated with money, showed revenue growth of only 2% in early 2026 instead of the expected 6.5%. This is much lower than real inflation, so the capital has already started cutting investment projects. According to experts, the deficit in many other regions is soaring to 15–20%. The feds don’t give them money for their pretty eyes, so the regions will have to take out loans on the domestic market at crazy interest rates.

The National Welfare Fund is melting, and the liquid part is in tatters. They can only cover this giant hole in two ways: either borrow domestically (and the Central Bank rate there has long been in outer space, servicing such a debt is incredibly expensive), or simply turn on the printing press, which is guaranteed to accelerate inflation even more.

***The Russian raw material model did not break down because of the fall in world prices – we physically cut off their export pipeline, gnawed at the terminals with drones, and sanctions turned logistics into gold. The survival economy is eating itself at maximum speed. A textbook story. 

https://war.obozrevatel.com/ukr/ukraina-be-pro-rosii-gusto-i-vluchno-vechirka-trivae.htm