Good day. And as I have said many times, when one is tempted to focus on the drama of the front line — the daily reports of minor advances and withdrawals, the shifting salients and contested villages — it is often wise to turn one’s gaze instead to the quieter systems in the background. This week, that quieter system is the Russian energy complex. And it is no longer quiet.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries are no longer isolated incidents. They have become a pattern: deliberate, persistent, and aimed at the very core of Russia’s wartime economic model. We have seen multiple facilities hit, production disrupted, export flows constrained, and domestic supply strained. Each individual strike might be dismissed as reparable damage. Taken together, they signal the onset of what we may fairly call a refinery winter for Moscow.

Let us recall that hydrocarbons are not merely a commodity for Russia; they are the foundation of its fiscal capacity, its patronage networks, and by extension, its ability to sustain large-scale warfare. Oil and gas revenues finance the military budget, anchor the currency, and lubricate the political system. To strike refineries, therefore, is not simply to damage infrastructure. It is to attack the bloodstream of the state.

Ukraine’s intent is not to collapse the Russian economy overnight. That is neither realistic nor necessary. Instead, the objective is cumulative degradation: to impose repeated repair costs, to disrupt export schedules, to erode investor confidence, and to force the Kremlin into unattractive trade-offs between domestic consumption, export revenue, and military fuel needs.

Russia, for its part, finds itself pursuing increasingly convoluted workarounds. It reroutes flows through less efficient facilities. It leans harder on the so-called “shadow fleet” to bypass sanctions. It offers deeper discounts to buyers who are themselves wary of secondary sanctions and reputational risk. Every adaptation carries a cost, and those costs are beginning to accumulate.

The true significance of this week’s refinery strikes lies in the way they intersect with sanctions. Sanctions, on their own, are often leaky and slow-acting. Wartime strikes, on their own, can be disruptive but repairable. But when sanctions and strikes are combined — when a sanctioned state must repair damaged infrastructure while selling into constrained markets at a discount — the pressure multiplies.

And here, as I have said, the key variable is not simply capacity, but net revenue. Russia can continue to pump and sell oil, but if it must do so at lower prices, with higher insurance and transport costs, and under the constant threat of further disruption, the net yield shrinks. Meanwhile, its expenditure — on the war, on domestic subsidies, on repression — does not.

Ukraine has understood something essential: that the war is no longer fought only in trench lines and missile trajectories, but also in balance sheets. The strikes on refineries are a form of economic maneuver warfare, stretching Russia’s capacity to adapt without ever needing to “win” in a single decisive blow.

Russian domestic messaging has struggled to contain the narrative. Local residents see the fires; markets see the disruptions; industrial planners see the repair bills. Official statements speak of “minor damage,” “prompt repairs,” and “no impact on supply.” But the repetition of such phrases, week after week, tells its own story.

As autumn approaches, the stakes will rise. Winter in Russia has always been portrayed as an ally of Moscow. Yet this time, there is a paradox: a state that historically weaponized winter may find itself constrained by the very season it once leveraged, if its refining and distribution systems are repeatedly degraded.

Analysts in future years will no doubt debate which pressure was more decisive: sanctions or strikes. The more accurate answer is that it was their interaction that mattered. This week marks the point at which that interaction became impossible to ignore.

The refinery winter has begun. Ukraine has opened this chapter deliberately. Russia will now have to live in it.