Note: Typos are in the original article.

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 8/25/25

Something has changed in the war in Ukraine. Kyiv hit the Soviet-era Druzhba oil pipeline that ships the black stuff from Siberia to Budapest – and they hit it three times in two weeks. The pipeline is now out of action for at least five days, according to the Russian side.

This is new on two counts. The first is that while Ukraine has been hitting Russian energy assets since the drone war started in 2023 with drones that have ever increasing range, due to fuel constraints they have been able to carry much more than 50kg of explosives. As most of Russia’s refineries were hard-topped in the Cold War and more recently have been covered with netting, all these drones could do is start some superficial fires that were usually put out in a day.

Now they are doing serious damage. The fire at the Novoshakhtinsk refinery has been blazing for five days now and the Russians are unable to put it out. The key Baltic oil terminal port at Ust-Luga was also hit by what looked like a very big explosion this weekend, according to video posted on social media.

Some 10% of Russia’s refining capacity has been hurt according to reports and production has plummeted while petrol and diesel prices have soared fuelling a growing fuel crisis. Ukraine has never been able to do this much damage before.

What is going on? The second thing is have started to see reports that these refineries are being hit by drones “and missiles”. I don’t recall reports of Ukrainian missiles being used that are that powerful or could fly that far before. There has been a lot of reports about the new FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile in the last week after an AP camera crew were shown the factory that makes them.

These are what Ukraine has been calling for since the start of the war. They can fly 3,000km which would put even the Omsk refinery in range, one of Russia’s biggest refineries, and carry around 1,250kg of explosives. That will do the job.

Where did these missiles come from? According to the AP report they have been developed in only nine months and Ukraine will be able to make seven of them a month by October. That is still a tenth of what Russia is producing missile-wise, but you only need one of them to land on Omsk to cause Russia a major headache.

Personally, I think it’s highly likely that the Flamingo was developed with EU help, or even that the parts are being manufactured in the EU and shipped to Kyiv for assembly, but this is pure speculation at this point. The previously announced Ukrainian new missile, the Palyanytsia, is a hybrid drone-missile, took 1.5 years to develop, is still not in serial production and can only fly about 700k with a payload of 20kg of explosives. The Flamingo is in an entirely different league.

It shouldn’t be surprising if the Ukrainians have had some covert help from the Europeans as that would also fit with the general drift away from simply supplying Ukraine with arms and money and instead helping them build up their own defence sector that is already well under way with the so-called Danish model.

Also, the timing is suspicious. Nine months ago, is when Trump took over and it was clear from the start that he would wind down US support. In facto anyone that took over was going to winddown Ukraine’s support, as long as the Republicans control the House. This weekend US Secretary for Defence Pete Hegseth said that he was putting a de facto ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles, which he can do as all the Western-supplied ones, including the Franko-British Storm Shadows, use US satellites for guidance.

Ukraine’s western partners have never liked the idea of Kyiv hitting Russian oil assets. The Biden administration refused to grant permission until last November and even then with many caveats. German has refused point blank to send its powerful Taurus missiles which are very similar in profile to the Flamingo thanks to the West’s “some, but not enough” policy of managing any escalation with Russia.

But as the West begins to walk away Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has reached a “screw it” moment and Bankova appears to be increasingly taking things into its own hands and started to blow up refineries.

Interestingly, Kyiv played with the idea of targeting Druzhba last August when it sanctioned Russian oil company Lukoil effectively barring it from sending Hungary oil via Druzhba. But it was done very delicately in an effort not to piss off the European Commission (EC). Only Lukoil was sanctioned, allowing the state-owned Rosneft to replace its quota so the volume of oil flowing was not affected. The move was as much a signal to Brussels as well as testing the water.

This August’s attacks are much more serious and also come at the peak of Russia’s driving season. There are no half measures here. Kyiv is trying to destroy Druzhba and screw what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen think.

The attacks – three in a row – have sparked a war of words with a bunch of letters and snarky comments being traded on social media over the weekend between Budapest, Brussels and Kyiv. It remains to be seen what comes out of this, but the European fuel market could be as hard hit as the Russian. And what if oil prices spike to over $150? That will also cause problems for Trump and the Republicans that face midterm elections next summer and will not be happy with gas at over $5 at the pump then. In fact they will do everything they can to avoid that, which bodes ill for Washington’s relationships with Bankova.

Final point is that China has offered to send peacekeepers to Ukraine if there is a UN mandate. This comes on top of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying very clearly that Russia has to be involved in the security guarantees if any are offered. Zelenskiy himself also said that Russia needs to offer “ironclad” security guarantees to Ukraine if there is going to be a ceasefire – using Russia’s own words who demanded “ironclad guarantees” of Ukraine never joining Nato just before the war started.

So far only France and Britain have offered to send troops, but as we reported this idea is unworkable. The main problem is: what will the rules of engagement be? There is no way you can allow British troops shoot at Russian troops and if they can’t shoot what use are they? However, bringing in non-Nato peacekeepers is a viable option. And BRICS nations would be acceptable – to Russia at least.

More interestingly, Lavrov (and implicitly China) are suggesting a wider deal that goes beyond the Ukraine. Lavrov gave his famous “new rules of the game” speech in February 2021 that called for the West to stop treating Russia like a child and “punishing” it for its “bad behaviours” with sanctions – something that the Developed World doesn’t do to each other. (Israel’s current unpunished genocide in Gaza being a glaring example.)

Lavrov has also obtusely called for a general reset in pan-European security arrangement, which can be included in Putin’s vague references to dealing with the “root causes” of the war. That is generally assumed to mean no-Nato for Ukraine, but in 2008 aft4er Dmitry Medvedev was made president, the first thing he did was travel to Brussels and propose negotiating a new pan-European security deal. It would have created a council to manage relations and both Russia and the West would have offered each other new post-Cold War security deals. Ironically, this would have included Ukraine and would have prevented the war that started in 2022. The whole thing would have been done under the umbrella of the UN, which has just come up again.

Personally, I think that this is what Putin is holding out for, in some form. The Kremlin has already made it crystal clear that it wants to restart all the Cold War missile agreements, which is part of the same new global security guarantees that Russia is looking for. But we are still a long way from even broaching any of these topics. Lavrov is complaining loudly that Russia is being excluded from the current security guarantees talks and is suggesting any meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin is dead in the water before it starts without this conversation.