Ukraine launched its deepest-ever attack into Russia, targeting two Arctic gas condensate facilities more than 3,000km (1,865 miles) from its border, on Wednesday, signalling that Ukraine has further developed its military capabilities as the Russia-Ukraine war continues through its fifth year. Unconfirmed videos circulating on social media show large clouds of thick, dark smoke and fire at the Novy Urengoy plant in western Siberia, recorded from a distance. Dmitry Artyukhov, the governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug region, wrote on Telegram that the drone attacks had been intercepted and “debris from the drone caused a fire upon impact”. There have been no reports of deaths or injuries.
Since the start of the war, Ukraine has dramatically increased its capacity for the mass production of low-cost drones and has more recently been specifically targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure and logistical hubs. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the latest long-range attack “completely justified” on social media. It came just days after special United States envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff visited Moscow and Kyiv with new proposals to end the war, although no specific details were shared on the new proposals. While attacks on Russia’s and Ukraine’s capitals were halted during the three-day visit earlier this week, they immediately resumed following their departure.
But what does this new, long-range capability on Ukraine’s side mean for the next phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war? The Ukrainian Armed Forces says it hit two critical Russian gas processing plants, in Novy Urengoy and Purovsky district, with FP-1 drones produced by Fire Point, a Ukrainian company specialising in the production of long-range drones. The pink FP-1 drone – Fire Point FP-1 UAV – is about 6 metres (20ft) wide and can travel at 140-180km (87-112 miles) per hour. It costs less than $60,000 to produce each drone, an amount that is considered low.
The furthest an FP-1 drone had travelled before the Novy Urengoy attack was in July, when it hit an oil refinery in the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia, about 2,500km (1,550 miles) from the border with Ukraine. The Kremlin’s envoy to the Urals, Artem Zhoga, said Wednesday’s attack by Ukraine was the first to reach the Arctic. The targets were two Russian gas processing plants in the Novy Urengoy and Purovsky districts of Yamalo-Nenets. The Yamalo-Nenets region hosts about 80 percent of Russia’s natural gas production and two-thirds of its gas reserves, as well as 13 percent of the country’s oil reserves.
Gas reserves in this region stand at 26.5 trillion cubic metres; global gas needs stand at about 4.2 trillion cubic metres per year. Novy Urengoy is known as the gas capital of Russia due to its vital production for the Russian gas and oil industry. The ability of Ukraine to reach targets here means it could unleash much more damage on Russia’s economy, which depends heavily on energy exports for income – especially as Russia has been under international economic and trade sanctions since it first invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Videos of Russian citizens queueing for petrol were shared widely on social media earlier this year, despite Russia holding one of the world’s largest reserves of gas and oil.
The attack on Russian gas infrastructure could have serious consequences for the European Union as member states heavily depend on supplies of Russian gas. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU implemented sanctions on Russian oil and gas and began to invest in efforts to become less reliant on Russian energy. But the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which previously moved about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, means that Europe is once again struggling for gas imports. Gas prices in Europe rose above 80 euros ($93) per megawatt-hour this week, the highest price since 2023, according to the Dutch TTF, a wholesale market that sets the price benchmark for European gas.
Current gas reserves in Europe stand at about 65 percent, compared with 80 percent last year, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe. Dwindling reserves are currently a particular worry for the continent as it heads into winter. EU member states were urged to start storing gas in March, shortly after the US and Israel started the war on Iran. But the European Court of Auditors released a report on Wednesday stating that member states have not invested enough in other energy sources to be able to phase out Russian gas, and that the bloc’s “crisis‑response objectives often cannot be demonstrated”.
