Transcription
My dear viewers, we need to talk! The events are currently unfolding rapidly, and it is much worse than even I thought in the last video! The breathtaking series of Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil ports and refineries continued through this night. Ust-Luga was hit for the third time in a row – FIRMS images show the spread of fires to the north, Primorsk has been burning for seven days now, with firefighting teams unable to achieve anything. But what is even more significant than these reports: Now, based on the increasingly clear attack patterns of Ukraine, it is becoming increasingly evident what Kyiv's strategy is truly aiming for! Please hold on tight, because if it succeeds – and currently everything points to it – then it is not just about temporarily choking off Russia's financial flows from exports. No, it is about the destruction of the Siberian oil fields themselves – the endgame for Putin! Just wait until I have explained to you how incredibly cleverly the attacks are interconnected, so that a fatal, unstoppable cascade has already been triggered all the way to Siberia. Most analysts have not even registered it yet, but as soon as you realize what emerges from the synergy of the attacks of the past week alone, you will be speechless! A domino effect, where damaged terminals, idled refineries, overflowing oil storage, and blocked product outflows interact at the worst possible moment, forcing Moscow to shut down production in the Siberian fields themselves. If this succeeds and the combined loss of around 2.5 million barrels per day – around 28% of Russia's total production – is maintained for weeks or even months, then a temporary export disruption could become a permanent loss of real production capacity. I will also explain all the relevant technical background to you shortly, why restarting production, especially in permafrost, is incredibly problematic and will set Russia back economically by years. Years that Putin no longer has. This is precisely where the strategic leap lies: Ukraine is not just attacking Russia's war chest, but the physical substance of the system from which that war chest is fed in the first place. So, please listen carefully now! To my last video, I received many comments accusing me of exaggeration and questioning the historical significance of the current events in Russia that I postulated. But now, based on the increasingly clear attack pattern and the much deeper analyses it allows, it turns out that the opposite is true! Ukraine's incredibly consistent strategy is becoming clearer and clearer, and as soon as you have heard the compelling figures and undeniable facts on which it is based, you will have no doubt that my assessment so far was still far too conservative. The long-term implications of the destruction currently taking place are monumental without any exaggeration – and it will most likely mean the end of Russia as an energy power for the foreseeable future. So, get ready and please give this video a hearty thumbs up. In this deep analysis, we will really get to the heart of the matter, so that even the last doubt is dispelled with factual basis! (THE PUZZLE PIECES NOW FORM A PICTURE – AND FOR PUTIN, IT IS A PICTURE OF TERROR!) Please pay attention! Immediately after the first attacks on Primorsk and Ust-Luga, Ukraine followed up – and not just anywhere, but against one of the most important processing centers in northwestern Russia – and that was absolutely no coincidence. On the night of March 26th, Ukrainian drones hit the large refinery in Kirishi in the Leningrad Oblast. And now it turns out: This was not a secondary target, and certainly not a symbolic pinprick, as some skeptics mockingly claimed. Kirishi is one of Russia's largest refineries. The plant processes 20 to 21 million tons of crude oil annually, supplying more than six percent of all Russian refinery products. After the attack, a fire broke out there, affecting central parts of the facility: crude oil processing units, storage tanks, bitumen production, and gas fractionation plants. These are not interchangeable ancillary buildings. These are functionally critical elements of a refinery, without which processing, refining, and onward transmission are massively disrupted or become entirely impossible. And it didn't stop at Kirishi. A tanker in the Black Sea was also attacked, to make it clear that this export route is also extremely insecure for the Russians. However, the decisive factor was an attack that definitively confirmed the pattern towards the destruction of the oil fields. On the night of March 28th, drone swarms hit the refinery in Yaroslavl, Russia, not far from Moscow, with an annual capacity of 15 million tons, roughly another 300,000 barrels per day. And here the strategy suddenly becomes clear when you look at which pipeline routes these targets lie on. Primorsk, Ust-Luga, Kirishi, Yaroslavl – together they form a picture that cannot have arisen by chance. The oil processed or exported through these facilities comes from the large West Siberian oil fields, which form the heart of the Russian raw materials economy. Previously, it was exported to Europe via the Druzhba pipeline, after which the ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga ensured the export of sulfurous Urals, primarily to China and India. (March 25, 2026: Hungary threatens to stop gas supplies to Ukraine – escalation in the dispute over the Druzhba pipeline. At the center of the dispute is the "Druzhba" pipeline, one of Europe's largest oil transit routes, through which Hungary, Slovakia, and other EU countries are supplied via Ukraine. Transit via this route has been interrupted for about 30 days. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy previously stated that while Ukraine is not hindering repair work on the pipeline, he opposes the resumption of Russian oil transit via this route.) So, and now let's take stock! Kirishi processed around 17.5 million tons of crude oil in 2024, or about 350,000 barrels per day; this corresponded to 6.6 percent of the total Russian refinery volume. According to the operator, the refinery in Yaroslavl has an annual capacity of 15 million tons, or roughly another 300,000 barrels per day. If you add these volumes to the approximately 2.0 million barrels per day of disrupted export capacity, you arrive at a tied offtake loss of about 2.5 to 2.6 million barrels per day. With Russian crude oil production of 9.2 million barrels per day, this corresponds to almost 28 percent of total production. And this is precisely the key: Primorsk, Ust-Luga, Druzhba, Kirishi, and Yaroslavl are not a random collection of individual targets, but links in the same western export and processing corridor for Urals crude oil from Western Siberia and the Volga-Ural region. The Baltic pipeline corridor connects Yaroslavl and Kirishi with Primorsk; BPS-2 runs from the Druzhba junction at Unecha to Ust-Luga and has a branch to Kirishi. If you hit this chain at multiple points simultaneously, you are not just hitting individual facilities, but a connected system. In addition, Russia cannot simply reroute such a volume elsewhere. Reuters and EIA point out that the eastern diversion routes are already limited: The pipeline and sea routes to China, as well as ESPO exports via Kosmino, together amount to about 1.9 million barrels per day; in addition, there are about 250,000 barrels per day from Sakhalin and about 300,000 barrels per day of deliveries to Belarus. This is important because it shows that the loss of 2.5 to 2.6 million barrels of daily offtake cannot simply be compensated with a stroke of the pen. (Russia Country Analysis 2025 by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA describes ESPO and Druzhba as the primary Russian crude oil routes to China and the EU. At the same time, it states a maximum capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day for ESPO, with the two Russia-China strands accounting for a maximum of 1.17 million. The capacity of BPS-1 and 2 to Primorsk and Ust-Luga, on the other hand, is 1.3 million barrels per day combined. From this, it follows that Russia has eastern diversion routes, but not arbitrarily scalable reserve routes.) And this is precisely where the next escalation level arises: If the oil cannot be exported and cannot be sufficiently processed, it has to go somewhere. Reuters already reported in February that Russia is heading towards storage saturation with sustained export pressure. Kpler estimated onshore stocks at the time at around 16 million barrels, already well over 51 percent of visible tank capacity; even if parts of the pipeline network are included as storage in an emergency, the total onshore cushion only increases to about 100 million barrels. With an offtake shortfall of 2.5 million barrels per day, even this theoretical maximum would only be a buffer of about 40 days – and the actually freely available capacity is below that, because tanks are already partially filled and some port and storage facilities have been damaged or are needed for crisis operations. An revenue problem thus becomes a physical production problem within weeks. Perhaps you remember that last year I pointed out that the visually impressive hits on the storage tanks, which then often burned for days, were not as significant as those on the cracker towers of the refineries, which are difficult to replace. Well, this assessment changes in the current context: The failure of storage capacity is now, thanks to combined attacks on ports and refineries, becoming a critical breaking point in the entire production and supply chain, which directly affects the further operational capability of the oil fields themselves. In addition, the still-functioning refineries in the northwest of the country have no storage capacity for certain petroleum fractions, especially naphtha and heating oil, which make up a large part of the originally processed oil volume, but for which there is almost no market in Russia. If they cannot export these, they must cease refining, as they simply have no storage capacity and no market for this significant portion. Their unprocessed portion then increases the shortfall in crude oil procurement and shortens the time until tanks are full or until production restrictions become necessary. In a month, Russia will have to start drastically restricting production; they will probably have to start restrictions even earlier, as they cannot afford to drive into a wall at full speed. If they shut down production in the permafrost, they will be unable to restart it without Western technical and material support – and three-quarters of Russian production takes place in permafrost. So, let's now dive deep into the huge problems that are now emerging in Siberia! (THE COLD DEATH IN PERMAFROST) Many people imagine that an oil well can simply be turned on and off like a kitchen faucet when demand falls or in times of crisis. In reality, however, a production stop is a far greater problem than merely halting an industrial production line for a while. When the flow in an oil well stops, we instead trigger a dangerous geological and technical chain reaction that often leads to the total loss of the well. As soon as the continuous oil flow is stopped, the sensitive environment inside the well immediately changes. The constant heat and steady movement of the flowing crude oil are suddenly missing, causing the oil to settle and separate into its components. As a result, the oil becomes waxy and viscous. This thickened mass acts like glue and physically clogs the tiny pores in the rock through which the oil must actually travel to the surface. In addition, there is a risk that surrounding groundwater will seep into the now dormant oil layers. If this happens, the productivity, i.e., the yield of the well, can be permanently "drowned" and irrevocably destroyed. Even if the well survives this phase, restarting it is a monumental undertaking. This, by the way, is the reason why Trump triggered the greatest global oil crisis of all time in the Middle East – and an almost unstoppable world economic crisis – but more on that in another video. In crisis areas, shut-in wells are often sealed with heavy mud or cement plugs to secure them. Before any oil can flow again, these massive barriers must be painstakingly drilled out. If one then tries to rebuild pressure too quickly, one risks fracturing the sensitive underground rock formations and ruining the entire oil field forever. A restart is therefore not a simple push of a button, but a delicate process that takes several months even in the best-case scenario – but under the difficult Siberian conditions, it can easily take several years. While shutting down a well in warm regions like the Middle East already presents these enormous problems, this process in Russian Siberia is an absolute infrastructural fiasco – the cold death. Here, the extreme climatic conditions turn a stop into a death sentence for the facility. ("Given the special climatic conditions due to permafrost and low winter temperatures, a shutdown of oil flow and the subsequent freezing of wells and transport infrastructure could cause significant damage to Russian oil infrastructure. Reconstruction can take several years or may not be economically feasible due to lack of capital or international technical know-how. This could lead to a permanent reduction in Russian oil production capacity by 4-5 million barrels per day.") About two-thirds of Russia's territory rests on permafrost soil, where winter temperatures can reach minus 50 degrees Celsius. When the continuous flow of hot oil stops here, the vital heat source in the thousands of kilometers of pipelines is lost. The result: The crude oil literally freezes in the well and in the pipes at these sub-zero temperatures. In addition, Russian oil fields are often old and require constant flow. If production stops, the liquid cools down, paraffins harden immediately, and the essential pressure in the reservoir drops massively. About 50 to 70 percent of Russian wells that have been shut down once are then irretrievably lost without gigantic, often multi-billion dollar capital investments and complex Western technology. A restart in Siberia often requires completely frozen facilities to be re-drilled from scratch. The costs for cleaning, the massive use of chemicals, and the replacement of complex submersible pumps quickly amount to high millions per well. Since Russia was also heavily reliant on Western technology for these highly complex repairs, the know-how and material to save the facilities are now often simply lacking. Russia does have its own technology and decades of experience for easily accessible, conventional oil fields. However, the easily accessible fields are increasingly being depleted. But to extract oil from aging fields, in extreme permafrost, or through unconventional methods like fracking, the Russian oil industry has been enormously dependent on Western oil service companies in recent decades. Due to the sanctions following the Ukraine war, many of these Western companies have withdrawn or severely restricted their supplies. Russia therefore lacks essential spare parts, software updates, and the necessary expertise to carry out complex repairs on damaged wells. And China also lacks expertise in high-tech oil extraction. While it is currently the most important lifeline for the Russian oil industry and supplies a lot of basic equipment, if old or complex Siberian facilities freeze or are damaged due to a sudden production stop, even Chinese partners often lack the high-precision technical tools to save these wells economically. There is simply no easy substitute for Western technology in this extreme high-tech segment at the moment. But let's return to the big strategic picture after this brief technical detour! Because what the probably world's best military historian and professor of strategic studies, Phillips P. O’Brien, has worked out – also in connection with Trump's Iran war – I absolutely do not want to withhold from you! (A NEW EPOCH OF SYSTEMIC WARFARE) When discussing attacks in a war, many people only think of the destruction of individual objects. This is a classic problem, especially when considering air forces. When airplanes first made it possible to attack targets hundreds or thousands of kilometers behind the front lines, the search for the most lucrative targets began. Professor O’Brien has written a series of excellent and groundbreaking books, especially on the importance of strategic air warfare, including "War and Power" and "How the War was Won." He emphasizes that this search for lucrative targets often boils down to the hope of finding a kind of military "magic bullet" – a single target whose destruction would cripple the enemy's war machine. In World War II, the spectrum of such supposed key targets ranged from massive industrial facilities like aircraft factories to tiny components like ball bearings. The logic behind it was always the same: If you take away the enemy's ability to produce this one good, you deliver a death blow to their war potential. Reality, however, showed: There is no single magic bullet. Instead, there are key systems. In World War II, these were primarily the transport networks. As soon as the Allies disabled Germany's and Japan's ability to move goods freely within their economies, the final decline of the Axis powers was sealed. He discusses this concept in more detail in his books, and if you wish, I can go into more depth on these in separate videos. Please write me a comment if you are interested in such more general principles, which are actually indispensable for general understanding and contextualizing what is currently happening. The problem with attacking an entire system is that you need significantly more attack mass and more developed military capabilities. It is not enough to disable a single factory. You have to disable an entire chain of targets that keep the system running. And you have to hit them repeatedly. With the attack on the Baltic Sea ports, Ukraine has targeted a central pillar of the Russian oil export system, which it had not been able to hit effectively before. Although the Ukrainians had already attacked refineries before, it was never sufficient. As long as the attacks were limited to refineries, it was relatively easy for Russia to repair the damage. The Russian oil export system as a whole could continue to function. Since Russia, unlike the US, Saudi Arabia, China, and Europe, does not have significant strategic oil storage capacity, it could also use exports and oil tankers to absorb excess oil production after refinery outages. Since this is now not possible, it will likely be forced to throttle or completely shut down wells. A dilemma of dramatic proportions, as restarting can cost many billions in investment. This also makes the timing of the attacks strategically plausible. Ukraine probably set it for spring, independent of the current crisis in the Middle East. According to the EIA, Western Siberia is Russia's most important production region, and many newer upstream projects are located in northern onshore areas. At the same time, scientific studies show that permafrost thaw and unstable soils are increasingly straining infrastructure in the Russian Arctic and northern Siberia; a Nature study locates 45 percent of Russia's Arctic oil and gas fields in zones with a high risk of thawing. (The decline of permafrost by mid-century threatens Arctic infrastructure. A study published in Nature Communications in 2018 concludes that by 2050, one-third of pan-Arctic infrastructure and 45% of hydrocarbon production fields in the Russian Arctic will be in high-risk regions for thaw-related ground instability; 1,590 km of the ESPO oil pipeline and 1,260 km of large gas pipelines from the Yamal region would also be affected.) If you force Russia into forced production cuts in spring or early summer, you are hitting a system whose northern infrastructure is already technically, climatically, and logistically sensitive. At this time, many permafrost drillings cannot be maintained at all due to the thawing of the top layer of mud, and any repairs could only begin around mid-autumn. By then, however, nature can destroy a large part of the unused infrastructure. This is precisely why a blockade of exports and processing maintained for months would be so dangerous. Then it would no longer be just a few weeks of lower revenues, but the real danger that Russia will only be able to restart parts of its production with difficulty, with delays, or in some fields not at all. This also explains why Ukraine shifted its attacks from refineries to air defense systems this winter. It was precisely the shaping that is now being used to deliver the final death blow to the Russian oil industry. Russia still has many refineries, so the failure of one or two facilities can be easily compensated. However, as the calculations I showed you earlier demonstrate, there is a dangerous bottleneck in the form of the now attacked corridor from Siberia. In total, the offtake of 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per day has already been destroyed, meaning 28% of the total production of 9.2 million. And it is simply impossible to reroute such a volume to other refineries or distribution channels. There are only a handful of export ports in Russia, the railway can transport extremely low capacities compared to pipelines or ships, and building new pipelines takes decades. This is precisely why the percentage of oil shipped through each of the now destroyed ports is so enormous. If you shut down the ports, it no longer matters how much oil Russia refines. The country will simply no longer be able to bring its oil to market – with the exception of oil flowing through pipelines, especially to China. But as I said: The ESPO pipeline is operating at full capacity, and 1 million barrels per day cannot save anything anymore. We are only talking about annual revenues between 20 and 30 billion dollars per year – down from a former peak of 180 billion. This is simply the end of Russia as an energy superpower and the country's economic foundation. The thing with which the regime bound people to itself, with which it financed its wars, and held together the entire overstretched semi-colonial "federation." Ukraine is now obviously targeting the entire Russian system of oil refining and export, and thus the entire "System Russia" – and with considerable success. Putin wanted to erase Ukraine, and this is now coming back to Russia as a huge boomerang. If they have the mass of weapons to maintain this pressure, this could indeed be a decisive turning point. The timing for this could not be better for Ukraine from a strategic perspective. Because Professor O’Brien has noticed another point in connection with Trump's Iran war that most people have probably not considered! (THE USA SHOULD PAY CLOSE ATTENTION!) Trump and his Secretary of War like to boast about the sheer number of targets destroyed in the bombing of Iran – as if this raw number alone had strategic significance. Just two days ago, the US spoke of having hit more than 10,000 targets, and before that, the figure of 15,000 circulated. No one probably knows that precisely – and it is basically irrelevant, even if many detail-obsessed analysts claim the opposite. They are so focused on the trees that they miss the forest: The targets hit, as stated by the Pentagon and the IDF, were only vaguely declared as part of Iran's military and industrial infrastructure. It is also obvious that they are deliberately targeting Iranian regime structures, as high-ranking politicians are repeatedly killed. All of this sounds impressive and correct at first glance. But consider: The longer the Iran war lasts, the less clear it becomes whether the US even understands the complex systemic interdependencies that keep the Iranian war machine and political system running. If the US has indeed hit 10,000 targets and the Iranian state not only continues to function but even strikes back effectively, it reveals glaring and unforgivable errors in both American and Israeli planning. In the area we can assess most reliably – the Iranian leadership – the US has obviously not understood the system well enough. The assassination of high-ranking leaders simply did not have the effect Trump expected. If the US government had paid more attention to the experiences and lessons of the Ukrainians from years of war, they might have realized how damn hard it is to sustainably damage an enemy system. It requires military capabilities, profound strategic understanding, and precise knowledge of how the opposing structures function. It took the Ukrainians a long time to reach this point, because all this knowledge and all these capabilities cannot be acquired purely theoretically – not even in countless simulations, war games, and maneuvers. No, they can only be acquired through many, many hard iterations. Or you can learn them from allies who have gone through these iterations and paid for them with their own blood. However, the United States of Arrogance rarely learn from other powers – much to their own detriment. But more on that in the next videos – as well as on the impact on China's Russia strategy, which is now also starting to falter. Of course, I will also keep you updated on the further course of the Ukrainian campaign and, above all, the strategic connections behind it. Because, as I mentioned in the last video: Ukraine has a new victory strategy not only in air warfare but also in ground warfare. So: Please don't forget to subscribe – definitely with the bell, if you are interested in these valuable analyses. And until then, please write me in the comments how you assess the consequences of this systemic warfare by Ukraine. Do you still think I exaggerated in my last video? Or have I definitively convinced you today of how epochal the Ukrainian strategy is and how historically significant the moment we are currently experiencing is? Please also write me how you think all this connects with the gigantic global oil crisis that Trump triggered in the Middle East. So: Get typing, and as always: Give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and please share it with your friends and on social networks. You will find the sources as always on my Patreon and Substack. You are welcome to support my work there through a membership or a voluntary donation via the link in the description. Likewise, with a channel membership here on YouTube. You always bring me great joy with that! Thank you all very much in advance, take care, and see you soon!