The residents of the Russian city of Novorossiysk They didn’t sleep a wink the night of last Friday, November 14. There had been an explosion that some witnesses described as a nuclear mushroom cloud that turned the night sky red over that port of the Black Sea. Ukraine had successfully launched a night drone attack against the Sheskharis oil terminal. Russian authorities reported that several coastal facilities and a civilian ship were damaged in the complex, and pro-Kremlin media pointed out the difficulty of putting out a fire that was still active many hours later.
The port was forced to suspend all crude oil exports, causing a rise of around 2% in international oil prices. The terminal Sheskharis It is the end point of several oil pipelines operated by the state-owned Transneft.
It was not an isolated incident. The Ukrainian Army has been focusing its fire on Russian oil infrastructure. It has managed to cause chaos at gas stations in a country that should not have fuel problems.
“It is the correct way to proceed for Ukraine because it puts the sustenance of the Russian war economy in the crosshairs,” he says to EL PERIÓDICO. Mykola BeleskovUkrainian war analyst. “But for that strategy to produce results, the attacks have to continue steadilywhich requires more investment in missiles and UAVs (drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, for its acronym in English). “In addition, Ukraine needs medium-range missiles like Tomahawks to be able to carry out combined attacks.”
Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries
Since last August, Ukraine has launched at least 58 attacks on Russian refineries, pipelines, warehouses and export terminalscompared to just three attacks in June and July, according to a .
The attacks reach a depth of up to 2,000 kilometers inside Russia with a strategic objective: to hit the energy revenues with which Moscow finances the war and complicate its military logistics. Also make the Russian population see the costs of war: queues have been seen at gas stations in the Moscow area.
“We are seeing how Russia’s depth is turning against them“They don’t have enough air defense to cover all the targets and Ukraine has a natural advantage as an attacker because Russia never knows what the next target is,” Beleskov points out.
All this occurs in a context in which diplomatic negotiations towards the end of the war seem to be reactivating. Zelensky has declared himself willing to negotiate the 28-point peace plan that he is drawing up Donald Trump in a secret negotiation with the Russian counterpart, despite the fact that many of the points (handover of territories still controlled by Ukraine to Russia and reduction of its Army by half) are clearly unacceptable by kyiv.
Russia advances: Ukraine on the verge of losing Pokrovsk
The bad news for Ukrainian Armed Forces They come from the Donbas front, where Russia is making significant advances, albeit at the cost of enormous casualties.
In recent days, it has taken part of the city of Pokrovsk. Several hundred Russian soldiers have already managed to infiltrate neighborhoods in the south of the city, which is almost surrounded, according to ‘The Kyiv Independent’. Russia would have taken advantage of the fog that makes the operation of Ukrainian defensive drones difficult and would have launched small squads of two or three soldiers, some on motorcycles or quads, to carry out the raids. These vehicles are more difficult to reach with unmanned aircraft.
The city is of great symbolic importance. It would be the largest town taken by Moscow since the capture of Bakhmut in May 2023. Vladimir Putin He has been trying to conquer her for more than a year. Russia has committed up to 150,000 soldiers for that efforta quarter of those it has in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian commander in chief Oleksandr Syrskii. In fact, half of the battles on the entire front, which stretches for more than 1,200 kilometers, are now taking place in that city and in neighboring Myrnohrad.
Ukrainian forces still have a small corridor for the supply and eventual withdrawal of their troops. The complete takeover of this mining city and logistics hub would be a hard blow for kyiv also because Russia would obtain a important railway and road junction for future advances towards cities in this area of the Donetsk region.
“The military situation in Ukraine is difficult. Russia takes advantage of its superiority in troops and weapons to press hard in the east (Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad) and in the south (Zaporijia direction). But they continue not to fulfill their plans to occupy Ukrainian territories and they do not stop delaying their deadlines, while they suffer enormous losses on the front, most of them irrecoverable (approximately a thousand dead and missing in action per day)”, EL PERIÓDICO tells EL PERIÓDICO. trusted source of the Ukrainian security establishment who asks to maintain anonymity. “The Kremlin maintains these ferocious offensives to reduce international support for kyiv by presenting Ukrainian defeat as inevitable, pressure allies to push Ukraine to accept Russian conditions and fuel internal distrust, combining military attacks with blows to civilian infrastructure and disinformation campaigns.”
The truth is that Ukraine’s ability to avoid major ruptures on the front depends on foreign military, financial and technical aid. For this reason, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has embarked on a new tour of several countries this week. In Greece has obtained extra liquefied natural gas to face the harsh winter. In FrancePresident Emmanuel Macron’s commitment to sell up to 100 Rafale fighter jets in the coming years, which will represent a qualitative leap in Ukrainian air defense. In SpainPresident Pedro Sánchez has guaranteed the support of the Spanish people and has increased the aid plans of 1,000 million for next year by 400 million euros, including 100 million urgently for the purchase of American weapons.
Ukraine’s hope
More than three and a half years after the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces remain able to prevent major breakthroughs of the front by Russia.
The Kremlin understands that Ukraine is very exhausted and is trying to take advantage of this “window of opportunity” (the harsh winter period, internal tensions in Ukraine) to break the resistance of the Ukrainian people, says the source of Ukrainian security. But Russia’s resources are not infinite. The enormous losses and economic problems make it impossible to maintain the current intensity of the war for long. Therefore, at this critical moment it is essential to provide Kiev all necessary means to “roll with the blows”, make Moscow understand that it is incapable of achieving its strategic objectives in Ukraine and finally force it to negotiate a real peace.
Containing the Russians, the Ukrainians also achieve certain successes in some axes. But it is not about recovering territory through major counteroffensives, but about deter Russian invaderssending the message that they will have great losses for every centimeter of territory; to prevent them from cutting off logistics or surrounding the Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine wins if it endures, while negotiations for a just and sustainable peace arrive.
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