Russia hits over 200 Ukrainian petrol stations in June-July campaign

Russia has struck more than 200 Ukrainian petrol stations since June - roughly three a day - as its drone and missile campaign systematically targets civilian fuel infrastructure rather than military sites, CNN reported on July 31, citing Ukrainian officials and its own analysis of at least 30 verified attack videos filmed in June and July.

The campaign is the mirror image of Ukraine's own long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries, and marks a further escalation in a tit-for-tat missile war  in which both sides have increasingly turned to hitting the other's civilian economy directly, from retail warehouses to petrol stations, rather than confining strikes to front-line military targets.

Regina Kharchenko, Zaporizhzhia's acting mayor, said her city alone was hit by 54 strikes on petrol stations in the 24 days to July 27, killing four people and injuring 29. "This is deliberate terrorism targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians," Kharchenko said, adding that Russia was "deliberately targeting facilities that have no military significance, but ... are essential to the daily functioning of a big city." This is now the fourth front in Operation Wildberries, the tit-for-tat campaign of strikes on the two countries' civilian retail and consumer economies rather than purely military infrastructure.

Yaroslav Starovoitenko, president of the Ukrainian Oil and Gas Association, said the attacks were intended to intimidate ordinary civilians. Strikes have been concentrated in Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv regions, where stations have come under attack almost daily since spring. In frontline areas where most fixed stations have already been destroyed or badly damaged, mobile refuelling points are being brought in to replace them, according to Russian military-linked reporting of the campaign.

Russian milblogger channel Rybar put the toll at more than 60 stations hit between July 19 and 31 alone using a mix of Geran and Gerbera loitering munitions, guided glide bombs and fixed-wing attack drones, with Sumy and Kharkiv regions accounting for roughly half of all hits, although Rybar's more granular breakdown by weapon type and daily tally could not be independently corroborated. The channel said reduced fuel-shipping volumes in affected areas were pushing up local diesel and petrol prices. The United Nations has separately said June was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.