The war between Russia and Ukraine has long since stopped being fought only at the front - it's also being fought against the oil infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. On the night of May 30-31, the oil refinery in Saratov caught fire after a series of explosions, with thick black smoke over the industrial zone and flames visible from afar.

According to sources on both sides, the attack was carried out by Ukrainian drones, targeting the plant's isomerization unit - precisely the part whose strike set off the fire. The Saratov refinery is one of the older ones in Russia, with a processing capacity of around 4.8 million tons according to 2023 data. It's not the largest, but it's part of the network that feeds the Russian war machine with fuel.

At the same time, strikes hit oil depots in the Rostov and Krasnodar regions as well, including the port zone near Taganrog and fuel depots in southern Russia. The governor of the Rostov region, Yuri Slyusar, said the fires at the port were put out with no oil spill, and two people were injured. According to him, Russian air defense shot down nearly 50 drones over the region.

The figure of 50 downed drones, if accurate, says two things in the same sentence: that the attack was massive, and that the defense failed to stop it completely - otherwise the refinery wouldn't be burning. Official statements in wartime always balance between "we repelled everything" and "there was damage," and the truth is usually somewhere in between.

Kyiv's strategy is clear: if you can't break the front, break the fuel that feeds it. Every burning refinery is less diesel for the tanks and less revenue for the budget. The war of attrition is fought in long numbers - tons of refined oil, millions in the budget, drones costing a few thousand euros against plants worth billions. And the end, as usual, can't be seen through the smoke.