Ukraine's fuel infrastructure under sustained Russian drone assault

Mayor Ihor Terekhov's message to drivers in Kharkiv is blunt: fill your tank and leave. Don't linger. Don't browse. The reason sits in the wreckage of two petrol stations hit by Russian drones on a Monday in late August, which wounded two people and underscored a campaign that has been grinding on for months with accelerating intensity.

Since April, Russia has systematically targeted Ukraine's civilian fuel infrastructure with drones and missiles. The attacks began in regions near the front lines but have spread and intensified. In July alone, investigators verified 114 strikes on filling stations—nearly double the 66 recorded in June. Across the entire conflict, at least 246 petrol stations have been damaged or destroyed, according to Oleksandr Sirenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian energy think-tank Nafto Rynok. The toll includes at least three people killed in a single attack near Kryvyi Rih last week, and the constant threat has forced police to issue extraordinary guidance: abandon your vehicle and leave the station whenever air raid sirens sound. "You can fix your car, but you won't get your life back," one regional police force warned.

The nature of the assault has evolved. Early attacks used smaller, remote-controlled drones, but Russia has increasingly deployed larger Iranian-made Shahed drones, each costing between $20,000 and $50,000. One petrol station absorbed five direct hits from these weapons—a financial calculus that underscores the scale of the campaign. Some critical supply routes have been rendered nearly unusable. The road connecting Kharkiv and Dnipro, two of Ukraine's largest cities, now has no functioning petrol stations. In the village of Opishnya in Poltava region, every station has been destroyed. In the southern Kherson region, almost half of all filling stations have stopped operating, with the remainder attacked almost daily according to regional officials. Trostyanets, a town of nearly 20,000 people near the Russian border, has lost all its stations; local authorities now dispense fuel from mobile tankers that constantly change location to avoid being targeted.

Yet the strategy, while devastating in its intent, has not crippled Ukraine's fuel supply. The National Bank of Ukraine reports that only 4 percent of the country's filling stations have been damaged or destroyed—a manageable loss in a market saturated with alternatives. When one station is hit, drivers travel further to another. Fuel imports arrive by truck rather than through vulnerable large refineries, giving the system inherent redundancy. Sales in regions farther from the front have compensated for losses in contested areas. BRSM Nafta, a major petrol station chain that has lost eight locations and is rebuilding two others, has responded by installing concrete shelters and anti-drone netting at its forecourts, reducing staff at some locations, and shortening hours. Customers, sensing the danger, have adapted their behavior. "Clients aren't browsing the aisles anymore," says Oleksandr Melnychuk, the chain's strategic marketing director. "They fill up and are keen to get on their way as soon as possible."

The contrast with Russia is stark. Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian oil refineries has triggered widespread fuel shortages across nearly every Russian region. According to the newspaper Izvestia, petrol was available at only 28 percent of Russian filling stations at the time of reporting. Russia, dependent on large centralized refineries and fuel depots, lacks the distributed infrastructure that has allowed Ukraine to absorb the punishment. The asymmetry reveals something about the two countries' energy systems and, by extension, their resilience.

Local officials and residents interpret the campaign as psychological warfare. Mykola Riznyk, the chief of Opishnya village, sees the strategy plainly: deprive the population of fuel, create hardship, force capitulation. In response, his authorities have begun stockpiling fuel in small quantities across multiple hidden locations. Kateryna Stokolya, a driver in Mykolaiv, frames it differently but arrives at a similar conclusion. She believes Russia aims to terrorize civilians into pressuring their government to accept unfavorable peace terms. Yet she also notes that Ukrainians have largely accepted the new reality. "Security comes first," she says. "If you can't fill up now, you'll fill up later. There are no queues or panic buying."

The campaign continues to intensify, but its effectiveness remains constrained by the very structure of Ukraine's fuel market and the discipline of its population. Russia has spent tens of thousands of dollars per drone to destroy infrastructure that, while painful to lose, has not proven irreplaceable. The real impact may be less about fuel availability and more about the daily reminder that nowhere is entirely safe—that even the routine act of filling a tank now carries risk.