Ukrainian Strikes on Russian oil refineries: What's the impact?

Press quote (Euronews)
03 April 2024

"Since Russian import capacity for refined oil products is limited in the short run, since they're set up to export, it's actually a fairly clever way of causing disruption in the Russian market with limited impact globally," Aslak Berg, Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, told Euronews.

According to him, Ukraine's strategy so far has been to conduct strikes against Russian oil refineries and not Russia's crude oil production facilities or export platforms.

"The Ukrainians have been hitting refineries, not Russian crude oil production or export facilities. This causes problems for Russia's domestic market for refined products, but for the rest of the world, a decline in Russia's exports of products will be compensated for by increased exports of crude oil," Berg explained.