Deep in the Ukrainian countryside, under a dome of stars, soldiers carried out final inspections of drones, each with a 24-foot wingspan and 110 pounds of explosives, and launched them toward Russia. The group’s commander watched through night-vision goggles as they faded into the darkness.
“In the morning, you will read that an oil refinery is on fire,” said the commander, identified by only his call sign, Casper, for security reasons.
Most nights since August, soldiers like these have wheeled long-range drones into an ever-changing set of open fields and let them fly, targeting refineries and trying to inflict pain on Russia and its oil economy in ways that Western sanctions have not done so far. With Russia gaining ground on the battlefield, Ukrainians hope that this campaign, using weapons and tactics that did not even exist when Russia invaded in 2022, will help persuade President Vladimir V. Putin to end the war at last.
“The most effective sanctions, the ones that work the fastest, are the fires at Russia’s oil refineries,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said last month.
One recent night, The New York Times had rare access to a long-range drone battalion, on the condition that reporters not disclose even a general region, how many drones took off or how many soldiers tended to them. Though far from the front, the troops worked in full body armor and helmets, knowing that at any moment, if their location were detected, they could be targeted by a Russian ballistic missile.
“Russia is hunting us,” Casper said.
Analysts say the drone campaign is not a decisive blow to Russia, but it is hurting ordinary Russians, and even an autocrat like Mr. Putin keeps an eye on public opinion.
By last month, Ukraine had blown up or damaged refining equipment capable of processing 1.5 million barrels of crude per day, or about 20 percent of the country’s refining capacity, according to Avanpal Sehmi Singh, a research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
Increasingly severe gasoline shortages have hit multiple regions of Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, and the price is up about 40 percent since the beginning of the year. Filling stations have limited purchases to five gallons per driver — and in some cases run out of gasoline entirely, selling only diesel, Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported.
Kommersant, a leading Russian business news outlet, said in late September that half of the stations in Russian-occupied Crimea had stopped selling gasoline. Other news media have reported people waiting overnight in lines at the pump.
The government has prohibited exports of gasoline since midsummer to address the problem, but it has not acknowledged any cause for the shortage.
Russian forces have hammered at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — power plants, transmission lines and gas pipelines — on and off since the war began, in an apparent effort to stifle Ukraine’s economy and make life difficult for its people. On Friday, a large attack plunged parts of Kyiv, the capital, and other cities into darkness.
As the war has continued, Moscow has ramped up a much bigger drone industry than Ukraine’s and has bombarded Ukraine much more intensively, often striking cities and civilian sites with no apparent military value. With a smaller arsenal, the Ukrainians are forced to be more selective in their targets, and they want to show their Western allies that they are not indiscriminately causing destruction and civilian casualties.
Ukraine’s leaders have long argued that Mr. Putin would not seriously consider ending the fighting unless Russia suffered more severe economic pain. But President Trump has so far not ramped up sanctions, despite Mr. Putin’s rebuff of Mr. Trump’s proposal for peace talks with Mr. Zelensky.
Some of the most important Western sanctions have tried to restrict Russia’s export of fossil fuels, its main source of revenue to support its government and finance the war. But those exports are mostly crude oil and natural gas. Refined oil products like gasoline and diesel are a much smaller part of the picture.
As a result, striking the refineries hits Russian people’s lifestyles and expenses, but does not cut deeply into the flow of money to the Kremlin.
Moscow will not allow fuel shortages to affect the military, but hitting refineries is an effective strategy for Ukraine, said Vladislav Inozemtsev, an economist focused on Russia and a founder of the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe. Russia does little to protect refineries with air defenses, and they are full of flammable liquids, amplifying the effect.
When a military factory is hit, it might be repaired in 10 days, he said, “while oil refineries keep burning all these 10 days.” In addition, repairs are hampered by the inability to import equipment from Europe and the United States.
Ukraine’s leaders see drones as both important weapons and powerful signals to its Western backers of its desire and ability to keep fighting.
Kyiv has invested heavily in developing its own drone technology and manufacturing, with its output growing rapidly in numbers and ability — both the short-range models that are now ubiquitous on the battlefield, and long-range ones that strike deep behind the lines.
Casper launched his first exploding drone — an import — in 2022. It flew 60 miles, a long-distance strike in those days. “At that point,” he said, “I understood that this is the future.”
The model, the Liutyi, now used by Casper’s team was developed in Ukraine after the war began. In August, a Ukrainian drone hit one of Russia’s largest refineries, in the Bashkortostan region near the Ural Mountains, 800 miles from the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine began targeting Russian oil refineries in March 2024, and then backed away from that strategy under pressure from the Biden administration. Early this year, Mr. Trump, hoping to orchestrate a truce, demanded a moratorium on strikes on energy infrastructure, but it was short-lived.
Ukrainian officials and troops have long been frustrated by American concerns that hitting Russia hard would lead to escalation. Washington has grudgingly provided some powerful weapons, but prohibited using them against targets in Russia.
Using homegrown weapons gives Ukraine more freedom to act, and the campaign against refineries ramped up sharply in August, when the 14th regiment alone hit 17 sites in Russia.
The unit began with 40 people and 10 vehicles — today it is a regiment. Officials would not say how many soldiers it has, but a Ukrainian regiment typically has up to 2,000.
While Ukraine’s army struggles to muster enough troops for the front lines, the drone regiment has no problem recruiting. Ukraine’s arms industry, including drone makers, has expanded significantly during the war, but it is not operating at full capacity.
The most urgent limitation is no longer the ability to make weapons, but the ability to pay the makers. Ukraine is pressing its Western allies to put up the money to increase its production.
“If we had billions more dollars, the course of the war would change very quickly,” Casper said.
His soldiers are in constant training. Battlefield changes lead manufacturers to regularly adapt their drones, and soldiers must learn to use the new equipment.
Out in the field at night, the soldiers are tense. The mission is an attack on oil refineries hundreds of miles over the horizon. The nightly attacks are coordinated between multiple groups, always on the move, launching from secret sites across Ukraine.
Midway through the launch operation by Casper’s group, with some drones still on the ground, an alert warned of a ballistic missile threat from Russia. The troops dropped what they were doing and ran flat-out to a dugout. After jumping in, one soldier, still panting, lit a cigarette and spat out, “Bastards.”
It was a false alarm. This time.
When the threat had passed, another drone started its propeller engine, accelerated to about 60 miles per hour and rose into the night. The pilot called out the altitude in meters — “10, 15, 30” — then switched the drone to autopilot for the trip into Russia.
A few hours later, a Russian Telegram channel for local news in Saratov, hundreds of miles away in the Volga River valley, posted a video of a burning oil refinery.
“They wrecked something there,” a male voice said in Russian on the video. “It’s really bad!”
Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting from Berlin, and Nataliia Novosolova and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine.