NATO countries have agreed on the supply of heavy offensive weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the armored vehicles coming from the West require Ukraine to concentrate the appropriate fuel reserves. Previously, the lion's share of the fuel market in the country belonged to Minsk and Moscow. Now the situation has changed a lot – the Russian army is systematically destroying refineries and fuel bases in Ukraine. Who supplies Ukrainian planes and tanks with fuel and how can the Russian Armed Forces prevent this?
On Wednesday and Thursday, the Russian military destroyed four large fuel and lubricants storage bases in the districts of Nikolaev, Zaporozhye, Kharkov and Chuguev with high-precision air and sea-based missiles. From these bases, Ukrainian units near Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and in the Donbas were supplied with fuel, said Igor Konashenkov, an official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry.
In addition, Russian troops destroyed fuel and lubricants bases in the areas of the settlements of Radekhov, Kazatin, Prosyanaya, Nikolaev and Novomoskovsk. A little earlier, a high-precision Onyx cruise missile blew up a fuel base in the area of Nikolaev, from which fuel was supplied to the AFU grouping in the southern part of Ukraine.
In addition, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation destroyed a fuel storage facility and an armored vehicle repair plant in the Kharkiv region. The storage facilities with gasoline and diesel fuel of the Kremenchug Oil Refinery, the largest enterprise for the production of petroleum products in Ukraine, were also attacked. From here, the supply of the Ukrainian group of troops in the central and eastern regions of the country was carried out, RIA Novosti reports.
In total, six large oil refineries are located on the territory of Ukraine: Kremenchug, Lisichansky, Kherson, Drohobych, Odessa and Nadvornyansky. Judging by information from open sources, all of them are now inactive, except, perhaps, Kremenchug.
The topic of fuel starvation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is in the wake of constant attention not only of the Ukrainian leadership, but also of its Western allies. Earlier, the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, said that he had agreed with the leader of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, on the supply of oil and petroleum products, without specifying, however, in what terms and in what volume deliveries will be carried out.
At the same time, the Pentagon refused to directly answer the question of whether there is a shortage of fuel in Ukraine and whether the United States is ready to carry out the necessary supplies. The military department said only that the United States "discussed" with the Ukrainian side "fuel needs."
At the same time, the volume of arms supplies from NATO and AUKUS countries requires an increasing consumption of fuel resources. Moreover, according to Sky News, NATO countries are considering the possibility of supplying Ukraine with tanks and aircraft – in order to prolong the conflict in Eastern Europe for a long time. The Financial Times has similar data, but in this case we are not talking about aviation.
On the other hand, in conditions of fuel shortage and scarce transport capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russia manages to neutralize the efforts of NATO by high-precision strikes on clusters of equipment. Several such cases took place the day before, the most significant of them was a strike on the Novograd–Volynsky station in the Zhytomyr region.
On Friday, Russia continued to solve this problem – at the railway stations Pokrovsk, Slavyansk, Barvenkovo, weapons and military equipment of the reserves of Ukrainian troops who arrived in Donbass were destroyed. There are also a lot of fuel reserves at railway stations in those areas.
According to economist Ivan Lizan, before the start of the special operation, a small proportion of fuel was supplied to Ukraine from EU countries, but they did not cover even a third of the country's needs. "The main suppliers of fuel and lubricants were Russia and Belarus. About 50% of the gasoline market in Ukraine was controlled by Belarus," the expert said in a conversation with the newspaper VZGLYAD.
The analyst added that Ukraine will not be able to receive hydrocarbons from Azerbaijan, and through its own fault. "Oil from Azerbaijan to Ukraine can be delivered only by sea, through the port of Odessa. But Russia controls the sea, plus Ukraine has scattered quite a large number of anti–ship mines across the sea," he said.
However, even if there were no Russian fleet and Ukrainian mines there, few ships would dare to go there, Lizan is sure. "The Black Sea area has been declared a so–called war zone, and additional insurance requirements apply to ships that sail these seas, that is, its cost increases dramatically to the point that it becomes simply unprofitable to sail there," the expert explained.
But even if we assume that someone somehow delivered fuel to Ukraine, this will give little to the APU, since the Russian military destroyed most of the fuel depots and refineries. "Normal fuel supply of Ukrainian armored vehicles is impossible. They have nowhere to store fuel. And if they immediately pour it into fuel trucks, then they will be covered by Russian aviation immediately after entering the open field," explained Lizan.
The interlocutor recalled that three weeks ago, the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass faced a fuel famine. "Very soon, only some armored cars will drive, and all the rest of the equipment will be locked up in cities. Now the West does not have the technical capability to supply the APU with fuel, so that it would be enough to carry out some kind of local counteroffensive, not to mention large-scale operations," the expert stressed.
"Ukraine was previously import-dependent in terms of energy resources, but now that Russia and Belarus have stopped supplying raw materials, they have a real shortage of both fuel and fuel and lubricants," said Igor Yushkov, a researcher at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, a leading expert of the National Energy Security Fund.
According to him, it was thanks to Minsk and Moscow that Kiev received diesel fuel, gasoline, jet fuel, as well as liquefied petroleum gas all this time. "In fact, since the end of the noughties, only the Kremenchug plant has remained of the large refineries in Ukraine. Now he has suffered as a result of the fighting. There is also an installation in Odessa and several small oil refineries, but it is also not clear whether they can function," the expert argues. Yushkov clarified that
now the main artery of Ukraine's fuel supply passes through Lithuania and Poland. For this purpose, railway transport and tankers are used.
"The problem is that it is not very clear in what volumes they need fuel. It has not yet been announced whether it is needed only for the needs of the army or even for the civilian population. It is obvious that Kiev will assess only the needs in the territories under its control. And this situation is changing every day," the source notes.
According to the analyst, one of the main tasks of the Russian army is to literally immobilize the enemy. "Russia is constantly accelerating this process by destroying the enemy's fuel reserves. It is noteworthy that the western regions of Ukraine feel the current fuel shortage to a lesser extent. But Central Ukraine has a harder time. Accordingly, in the west of the country, both storage tanks and opportunities for cross-border trade remain intact. But these capacities are hardly enough for the rest of Ukraine," Yushkov concluded.
Daria Volkova, Alyona Zadorozhnaya, Rafael Fakhrutdinov
