Ukraine's drone forces attacked four Russian oil industry facilities overnight on Saturday 18 April, in a campaign that began within hours of the US Treasury quietly renewing, for the second time, a sanctions waiver allowing the purchase and delivery of sanctioned Russian crude. The waiver, formalised as OFAC General License 134B, was signed on Friday 17 April, runs to midnight Washington time on 16 May, and was issued two days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly told reporters the administration would not extend it. For Ukraine, the 30-day window is not a technical trade policy instrument. It is a subsidy to the state financing the war against them. Kyiv's response was to hit the infrastructure the waiver helps keep profitable.
Ukraine's drone forces commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi confirmed on Telegram that Ukrainian forces struck the Novokuybyshevsk and Syzran oil refineries in Samara Oblast, the Tikhoretsk oil terminal and pumping station in Krasnodar Krai, the Baltic Sea port of Vysotsk in Leningrad Oblast, and an oil depot in Sevastopol, occupied Crimea. Ukraine's General Staff confirmed the hits, describing the targets as "important" sites supporting Russia's armed forces and saying the strikes were part of a broader campaign to undermine Moscow's military and economic capabilities. Russia's Defence Ministry did not acknowledge the strikes directly, reporting only that air defences had intercepted 258 Ukrainian drones overnight. Regional authorities confirmed the damage.
Samara Oblast governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said strikes had been recorded against industrial facilities and that emergency services were responding. Footage circulated online showed a large fire at the Novokuybyshevsk refinery. The Krasnodar Krai Emergency Response Headquarters confirmed a fire at the Tikhoretsk oil depot, with 224 personnel and 56 pieces of equipment deployed to contain it.
The targets
The Novokuybyshevsk refinery, owned by PJSC NK Rosneft, has an annual crude processing capacity of 8.8 million tonnes (roughly 176,000 barrels per day), making it one of Russia's 10 largest refineries. In 2024 it processed 5.74 million tonnes of crude, producing 1.1 million tonnes of motor gasoline, 1.64 million tonnes of diesel, and 1.27 million tonnes of fuel oil. It is the sole Russian producer of synthetic ethanol and para-tert-butylphenol. Ukrainian military intelligence has identified it as a primary supplier of premium-grade RT jet fuel for Russian military aircraft including the Su-27 fighter and the Tu-22M3 long-range bomber. It sits on the Transneft pipeline network and processes crude from western Siberia. The facility has been struck repeatedly since 2024, including on 10 March, 19 October, 16 November, and 27 November 2025. Its primary distillation units were still only partially operational before Saturday's strike.
Syzran, also Rosneft, sits further north in Samara Oblast. Its storage tank farm caught fire in the early hours of Saturday. Tikhoretsk is a node in the Transneft pipeline network moving crude from western Siberia and the Caspian toward Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. Vysotsk, on the Baltic, is a significant fuel export terminal whose throughput affects Russian product exports to Europe, Asia, and global bunkering markets. The Sevastopol depot, in occupied Crimea, completed a campaign that hit the Russian energy sector simultaneously across four administrative regions, from the Baltic to the Black Sea to the Volga basin.
The distance from the Ukrainian border to Novokuybyshevsk is around 900 kilometres. The drones that reached it were launched from deeper inside Ukrainian territory. The actual flight range exceeded that figure.
The waiver
OFAC General License 134B, issued on 17 April, authorises transactions involving Russian crude oil and petroleum products loaded onto any vessel before that date. It runs to 12.01 am Washington time on 16 May. It replaces a previous 30-day licence that expired on 11 April, itself issued in March as a response to supply pressure from the US and Israeli war on Iran.
Two days before the renewal, on Wednesday 15 April, Bessent told reporters: "We will not be renewing the general license on Russian oil and we will not be renewing the general license on Iranian oil." The Iranian half of that pledge held. The Russian half did not. The reversal drew immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats. Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, and Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren issued a joint statement calling the decision "shameful and a 180-degree reversal from Secretary Bessent, just two days after he pledged not to extend sanctions relief for Russia." They added: "Make no mistake, Putin has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of President Trump's war against Iran, as Russia saw oil revenues nearly double in March." Senator Richard Blumenthal had already argued on 10 April that the earlier waiver should not be extended. Representatives Gregory Meeks and William Keating have introduced House legislation that would terminate the Russian waiver and tighten restrictions on Moscow's energy exports.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz defended the extension on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday 19 April, telling host Kristen Welker: "This is not rewarding Russia. That's ridiculous. Russia, as a matter of fact, gets no new business here." He argued that the waiver covers only oil already at sea, that cargoes previously destined for China could now reach other US partners, and that Russia had lost a significant military partner in Iran. He added that the Trump administration had been the one to sanction Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's two largest oil producers, unlike the previous administration.
The practical effect departs from the rhetorical framing. Russia's crude and petroleum export revenue jumped from $9.75 billion in February, its lowest monthly figure since the 2022 invasion, to $19 billion in March, according to the IEA's April oil market report. That is roughly a billion dollars a day. Russian crude prices rose $32.70 per barrel over the month, to $78.38. Diesel prices jumped 88 percent to $143.82 per barrel. Fuel oil jumped 93 percent to $61.10. Crude export volumes rose 270,000 barrels per day to 4.62 million; total oil and product exports rose 320,000 barrels per day to 7.13 million. Crude revenue alone reached $11.45 billion, up $5.41 billion from February. Product revenue reached $7.59 billion, up $3.88 billion.
The largest single beneficiary was India. Indian refiners processed Russian crude at 12 facilities in March, up from seven in February. India's Russian crude imports rose by 930,000 barrels per day to two million barrels per day, accounting for 44.4 percent of its total oil imports. The March waiver allowed Indian refiners to accept deliveries on sanctioned tankers and to deal directly with Rosneft and Lukoil. India ordered around 30 million barrels of Russian crude under that first waiver. China was the second-largest importer at 1.8 million barrels per day. Of the approximately 36 million barrels of Russian "oil on water" that reached market in March, 22 million went to India and 14 million to China.
At the G7 finance ministers meeting in Washington this week, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said directly: "Russia mustn't be getting benefits from what's happening in Iran." He added that Ukraine should not be "collateral damage" of the Middle East war. Washington's position, in practice, is the opposite.
The contradiction
The Trump administration is managing a structural contradiction it has not publicly acknowledged. Operation Epic Fury, Washington's own military campaign against Iran, created the supply disruption that drove Brent crude to $96 per barrel last week. To alleviate the economic pain that disruption caused to US consumers and Asian partners, Washington is allowing Russian oil, sanctioned under legislation written to deny Moscow war revenue, back into global markets. The arrangement benefits Russia at the precise moment Russia is prosecuting a war in Ukraine that Washington is simultaneously trying to settle. Kyiv's strikes on Russian refineries are the visible expression of that frustration. Brovdi accused Washington of cynicism and said the waiver comes at a price measured in Ukrainian lives.
Waltz's argument that the waiver applies only to oil already loaded does not account for the revenue effect. Russia's March windfall came predominantly from price, not volume. An additional 320,000 barrels per day at $78 a barrel is worth around $750 million a month. The rest of the $9.25 billion revenue increase between February and March came from higher prices on every barrel Russia ships, including to buyers outside the waiver. The waiver's signalling effect, that Washington will accommodate Russian oil when it needs supply, is what prices in across the Brent complex. That is the effect Kyiv is trying to reverse by taking refineries offline.
The waiver also exposes the asymmetry in Washington's sanctions posture. The Iranian version of the same facility was allowed to expire. Iranian oil shipments currently loaded on tankers cannot lawfully be delivered to any US-linked buyer. Russian shipments can. The distinction Waltz made on Meet the Press — that Iranian refineries are blocked and Russian ones are not — is true, but the reason given (that Russia has "lost" Iran as a partner) explains why Russia is politically useful to Washington, not why sanctioning one belligerent and subsidising another constitutes a coherent policy.
The renewal passed with minimal domestic US political attention. The Touska seizure and the Hormuz ceasefire dynamics dominated the Sunday news cycle. That coverage gap is where the policy operates.
Inside Ukraine, the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia, which crosses Ukrainian territory, remains offline after damage sustained in late January. Novorossiysk, Ust-Luga, and Primorsk, the three Black Sea and Baltic ports that together handle 68 percent of Russia's seaborne oil exports, have all been hit in recent months and have all resumed partial operations. The IEA warned that Russian oil production may plateau near term as Ukrainian drone attacks continue to degrade port and energy infrastructure. Saturday's strikes are the next increment of that campaign. They follow the logic Brovdi laid out on Telegram: if the US is going to keep the Russian oil sector earning record revenue during a war against Ukraine, Ukraine will keep degrading the refineries that turn that crude into military fuel.
Brent opened Monday trade in Asia above $96 per barrel following the Touska seizure. The Russia oil waiver runs for 29 more days.