Ukraine has devastated Russia’s oil export capacity over the past week as its ground forces have stopped Russian advances in their tracks and reclaimed occupied territory.

According to one estimate, Ukraine has halved the Russian rate of advance in the past three months.

At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has concluded agreements with several Gulf states to export Ukrainian drone know-how in return for joint drone production support.

“We already have agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. We are working with Jordan. We are in communication with Kuwait, now also Iraq and Bahrain,” Zelenskyy said in a Wednesday evening video address this week.

“They are interested in our experience in countering drones and building a layered system-wide defence against modern threats,” he added.

The rate at which Ukraine can produce drones has been key to its success in holding back Russian advances and reclaiming occupied territory, commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii said.

“In March, the number of combat sorties of drone interceptors and the number of targets destroyed increased by almost 55% compared to February,” Syrskii wrote on the Telegram messaging platform on Monday.

Syrskii has previously said first-person view (FPV), remote-controlled drones are now responsible for 90 percent of Russian casualties.

On Thursday, Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Ukraine had also “systematically increased the purchases of engineering mines and ammunition for drones”.

He added that purchases in the first three months of 2026 equalled more than half the purchases in 2025 and predicted they would be “significantly higher” by the end of the year.

“Ammunition for UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] allows for targeted strikes against infantry and light equipment without using expensive large-caliber ammunition. They hit the enemy where other means are ineffective, and save resources for more complex targets,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine has become Europe’s ground zero for drone warfare innovation. Fedorov said he had witnessed the testing of a new generation of bomber drones capable of flying 20km (12 miles) through electronic warfare systems and carrying payloads of tens of kilogrammes.

On March 26, Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces Command reported that it had eliminated a Russian advance near the border of the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions and liberated the village of Berezove.

Syrskii said that while Russia continues to advance overall, Ukraine has reclaimed 470sq km (180sq miles) of occupied territory this year, marking its first territorial gains since 2023. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, has cited evidence to support the liberation of at least 334.06sq km (128.98sq miles) but said its “conservative mapping methodology underestimates Ukrainian advances”.

The ISW assessed the Russian rate of advance as having slowed by two-thirds over the past 18 months.

Russian forces advanced at a rate of 14.9sq km (5.76sq miles) each day from October 2024 to March 2025, the ISW said, compared with 10.66sq km (4.16sq miles) a day from March 1, 2025, to October 1 and 5.5sq km (2.12sq miles) a day in the first three months of 2026.

The pressure on Russia from mounting losses was underlined by the fact that the Ryazan region’s governor, Pavel Malkov, signed a decree on March 20 forcing businesses with at least 150 employees to select two to five employees to sign contracts with the Russian military.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that the front-line situation is the best it has been in 10 months. “The offensive they were planning for March was thwarted ⁠by the actions of our armed forces,” he said. “That is why the Russians will now simply step up their assault operations.”

Ukraine batters Russia’s war machine

Ukraine started striking Russia’s two oil export terminals on the Baltic Sea at the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk on the night of March 20-21 to counteract Russia’s windfall from rising oil prices.

During the past week, Ukraine has continued to pound Ust-Luga to the point of closing it on Wednesday.

Ukrainian drones struck Ust-Luga and Primorsk on March 27. Then Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne reported that Ust-Luga was struck again on Sunday. Reports showed Ust-Luga was struck again on Tuesday.

Russian opposition outlet Astra said Ukraine also hit the Bashneft-Novoil Oil Refinery in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan on Thursday.

That was the day Russian oil companies warned buyers they could declare force majeure on supply contracts from major Baltic Sea ports.

Ust-Luga and Primorsk account for about 60 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity, according to reports. The closure of one will constrain the Kremlin’s ability to raise cash for its war on Ukraine.

The Reuters news agency estimated that Russia lost about 40 percent of its oil export capacity while Bloomberg put the figure at 43 percent, saying exports had fallen from 4.072 million to 2.318 million barrels per day.

The attacks have also put pressure on the domestic oil supply, Reuters reported.

“The Ust-Luga export bottleneck puts at risk oil processing at four of the biggest refineries in the European part of Russia – ⁠in Kirishi, Yaroslavl, Moscow and Ryazan,” Reuters said. “In total they process around 55 million metric tons of crude oil per year (400,000 barrels per day), according to traders.”

Ukraine also directly struck the Kirishi and Yaroslavl refineries on March 27 and Saturday.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak drafted a resolution banning all refined petrol exports from April 1 to July 31 in an effort to stabilise domestic prices. Russia banned petrol exports in September as well in response to Ukrainian attacks on refineries.

Ukraine has also been hammering Russian munitions production. The Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday that it had targeted the Promsintez explosives plant in the Samara region with domestically produced Flamingo drones. It said Promsintez produces 30,000 tonnes of military explosives annually. Geolocated footage showed explosions and plumes of smoke coming from the plant.

In a message on Telegram on Tuesday, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, estimated that Russia has lost 45 percent of its missile production capacity through such strikes.

Are Russia and Iran learning from each other?

The Ukraine and Iran wars appear to have produced collaborations on the Russian side as well as the Ukrainian.

Russia in the past two weeks has begun to extend its drone strikes throughout the day rather than limiting them to overnight, suggesting it has been imitating Iran’s tactics against the United States and Israel.

Russia used this tactic for the first time on March 24. On Wednesday, it launched 339 drones into Ukraine overnight and then 361 during the day. Ukraine shot down more than 90 percent of the drones.

The ISW said the aim is “to impose psychological effects on civilians by consistently forcing them to take shelter and keeping the country under constant alert”.

There were reports the Russians have been teaching their tactics to Iran and its proxies.

On March 27, Iran-backed Hezbollah used an FPV drone to strike an Israeli tank in Lebanon, Kovalenko reported – a tactic pioneered by Ukraine and later copied by Russia. “There is information that proxies may receive assistance from Russians, including instructors from the ‘Wagner’ private military company,” he said in a social media post. (Al Jazeera)

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