The impact and perspectives of Ukrainian strikes on Russia's oil ports:

Ukrainian strikes on Russia's oil infrastructure could be a way to raise the stakes and force Putin towards the negotiations table.

President Zelenskyy's Middle East tour is probably also part of Ukraine's strategy to change the negotiations format. However, without China, the new negotiations format is unlikely, according to Denysenko. Here, it is important to note that a large part of Russia's oil exports to China goes through the ports in the Baltics.

Russia has three main locations for exporting oil and oil products in the Western direction: terminals in Primorsk and Ust-Luga ports (both in the Baltics) and Sheskharis terminal in Novorossiysk (the Black Sea).
These three locations together are responsible for a large part of Russia's oil exports (up to 60%).

In about two weeks, March 22 - April 6, 2026, Ukrainian Defense Forces launched successful strikes on all three of the main Western ports in Russia.

Nothing is more strategic for Russia's economy, and these objects are heavily protected. However, in two weeks, Ukrainian Defenders successfully broke through their defense at least seven times.

This means:

▪️Ukraine's ability to launch long-range strikes inside Russia is superior compared to Russian air defense;
▪️Ukraine is improving our tactics of launching long-range strikes.

The ports have not been destroyed completely, and the final scope of the damage will depend on many details (including the scale of future strikes).

However, there are numerous assessments that it will take at least months to repair a part of the destroyed infrastructure (e.g., the large reservoirs that burned down completely).

Available satellite images allow us to assume that about 10% of the total ports' volume has been put out of order for months, and about 20-30% is out of order for at least weeks. This means that the damage is huge, and that's just the ports, not including the other strikes on Russia's oil infrastructure.

Within the same two weeks, Ukraine has also launched strikes on three major Russian oil refineries.

All these strikes are contributing to further dis-balancing of Russia's oil production and exports, which creates further vulnerabilities in the system.

Russia has already banned gasoline exports. Further limitation of Russian capacities to export crude oil, combined with burning down oil reservoirs, will inevitably lead to the need to shut down oil wells (then, it is technically very difficult to reopen them).

Add to that the Russian shadow fleet tankers that are being detained and those that burn down.

All these negative effects will keep adding up, changing the potential negotiations dynamics.

📹: last night's attack on Novorossiysk port