Executive summary: Ukraine’s long- and intermediate-range strike campaigns against Russian energy and logistics infrastructure in Russia and occupied Ukraine are causing significant effects on the Russian economy and impacting Russia’s ability to sustain its frontline military efforts in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have recently intensified these coordinated strike campaigns, causing severe gasoline shortages across Russia and occupied Ukraine. Ukraine’s strike campaigns are causing Russia to lose petrochemical export revenue that could have gone toward its war effort and are starting to impact Russia’s frontline logistics. The Kremlin is implementing an array of temporary mitigations to try to ensure sufficient gasoline flows to the domestic market and to address problems facing consumers while downplaying the severity of the wide-scale gasoline shortages and projecting a facade of stability. The Kremlin will likely fail to address the direct cause of the gasoline shortages — Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure —because the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) and military are likely unable to rapidly strengthen Russia’s air defense umbrella to cover the frontline and its vast rear simultaneously. Ukrainian forces will likely be able to continue — if not escalate — their long-range strike campaign until Russia is able to find a solution to its air defense insufficiencies. Ukraine’s strike campaigns against Russian petrochemical infrastructure and logistics will likely continue to degrade Russia’s struggling wartime economy and have growing consequences on Russia’s frontline operations in the future. The Kremlin has repeatedly underestimated Ukraine and failed to prepare its defenses against attacks in past years, and such miscalculations are vulnerabilities that Ukraine has exploited and can continue to exploit.

Ukraine's Strike Campaigns Will Likely Continue to Hurt Russia's Economy and Military Operations in Ukraine