The lesson is simple — and history has already taught it once. As Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian refineries intensifies from once every few days to almost daily, the parallels with the Allied bombing of German fuel production in 1944–45 are becoming impossible to ignore.

From Every Two Days to Every Day

In 2025, Ukrainian drones struck Russian oil refineries roughly once every two to three days. In 2026, the attacks have intensified to an almost daily cadence. The explosions are bigger, the damage is deeper, and the repair times have doubled — from an estimated two weeks per strike in 2025 to approximately four weeks in 2026, according to Bohnert’s analysis. Ukrainian deep-strike drones such as the An-196 Liutyi now fly hundreds and, in some cases, well over a thousand kilometres into Russian territory, striking refineries, depots, airfields and arms plants. Ukraine’s defence ministry reported well over a thousand long-range strikes launched in May alone. The results are visible from space — and from the queues at Russian petrol stations. Reuters estimates the strikes have knocked out roughly a sixth of Russian refining capacity. Fuel rationing has spread across dozens of regions. Videos circulating on Russian social media show drivers fighting over fuel in multi-hour queues.

The WW2 Lesson

In 1944, the U.S. Army Air Forces launched the Oil Campaign — a systematic effort to destroy Germany’s synthetic fuel production. The results were catastrophic for the Wehrmacht. German aviation fuel output fell from 175,000 tonnes per month to 17,000 tonnes — a 90 per cent collapse. The Luftwaffe, which at that point still had thousands of airframes, was grounded because it had nothing to put in them. Panzer divisions that were supposed to block a Soviet advance were immobilised and overrun because they had no fuel to move.

The key factor was that the Allies controlled the skies over Germany. As the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey noted, even a first-class military cannot sustain operations when the enemy can strike its fuel infrastructure at will.

Putin’s Air Superiority Problem

The parallel to Russia’s current situation is increasingly exact. Like Nazi Germany after 1944, Putin no longer fully controls the airspace over his own territory. Ukrainian long-range drones — cheap, numerous, and increasingly sophisticated — can reach targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow itself. Russia’s air defence network, designed to counter cruise missiles and manned aircraft, has struggled against the low-flying, radar-elusive drone swarms that Ukraine deploys in waves. And like the German workers patching up synthetic fuel plants, Russian repair crews are caught in a cycle of repair and re-strike. Bohnert’s analysis suggests that as repair times lengthen and strike frequency increases, the cumulative effect is not linear but exponential — each new strike hits a system that has had less time to recover from the last one.

The Numbers

Bohnert estimates that if current strike rates and repair timelines continue, up to 45 per cent of Russia’s refining capacity could be offline simultaneously — well past the threshold of sustainability. Russia produces far more crude oil than it refines domestically, but crude cannot power tanks, jets, or trucks. It must be refined first, and that is where the bottleneck is tightening. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — the Washington-based think tank that tracks the conflict daily — has noted that Russia has actually lost more territory than it has gained in recent weeks, despite Putin’s claims to the contrary.

Putin’s Response: Blame the Ministry

When pressed on what is being done about the strikes, Putin deflected: the “main responsibility,” he said, “lies of course with the Defence Ministry.” Bohnert finds this revealing. “When a head of state starts publicly assigning blame for a strategic problem he has not solved, that tells you the problem is bigger than anyone wants to admit.”

Will History Repeat?

The Allied Oil Campaign did not end the war by itself. But it made the end inevitable. Tanks without fuel are scrap metal. Aircraft without jet fuel are museum pieces. In 1944–45, German fighter production actually increased even as the Luftwaffe shrank — because there was nothing to fly them on. Whether history will repeat itself over Russia’s refining heartland remains to be seen. But the trajectory, the expert analysis, and the parallel are all pointing in the same direction. And the drivers fighting over fuel in Russian internet videos are the first to feel what may be coming.

Sources: RAND Corporation (Michael Bohnert), Reuters, Meduza, Institute for the Study of War (ISW), U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, PBS, Fortune