OPEN LETTER: Putin, Your Oil Is Burning—and That’s Great News

The 40-day campaign of Ukrainian strikes

The SBU has authorized a 40-day campaign of strikes against Russian energy infrastructure. Zelensky confirmed strikes on oil refineries in Krasnodar Krai and Yaroslavl Oblast. This is no coincidence—it is a deliberate strategy aimed at degrading Russia’s ability to finance and fuel its war machine. Every refinery hit means less fuel for your tanks, less revenue for your military budgets, and less ability to sustain the pace of a costly war of attrition.

Russian gasoline production has fallen by 25% in one year. This figure—acknowledged by your own government—is costing you more than you care to admit. The lines at gas stations in certain Russian regions, rising fuel prices, shortages in Siberia and Crimea—all of this is well documented, even if your state media ignores it.

Ukraine is turning your own weapons against you

For years, Mr. Putin, you have used energy as a geopolitical weapon. Ukraine has turned that logic on its head: it is striking your energy infrastructure to inflict upon you the same hardships you have inflicted on it. Every time you bombed Ukrainian power plants, you were establishing a doctrine. Ukraine is now applying it against you. It’s painful, but it’s strategic reciprocity—and you can’t complain without acknowledging the origin of this logic.

The Guardian reported on June 28, 2026, that you yourself admitted that Ukrainian strikes are responsible for Russia’s fuel shortages. This is an extraordinary admission for someone who claims to be leading a victorious “special military operation.” Victories do not cause fuel shortages on one’s own territory.

There is a harsh truth that price caps and Ukrainian drones together have revealed: Russia’s war economy was less robust than it appeared. Russia can absorb sanctions—it has been doing so since 2022. But the combination of sanctions and direct strikes on production infrastructure is a different equation. And Putin is beginning to acknowledge this publicly.

The G7 and the EU Keep Up the Pressure

Mr. Putin, you counted on Western fatigue. You bet that liberal democracies, sensitive to electoral and economic pressures, would not hold out in the long run. This year, you lost that bet. The G7 is maintaining its sanctions. The EU is extending them for a full year. The oil price cap remains in effect. And arms deliveries to Ukraine continue, despite all your efforts to discourage them.

The G7 summit in Evian in June 2026 put Ukraine back at the top of the allies’ agenda. President Trump—whom you no doubt had hoped would be more accommodating—stated that Zelensky was fighting “pretty well” and expressed his admiration for Ukraine’s achievements on the battlefield. This is not the diplomatic path you had planned.

Mounting sanctions and growing isolation

The extension of European sanctions for a full year—a first—signals an institutional durability you may not have anticipated. The European Union has overcome its internal divisions on the Ukrainian issue. The countries most economically exposed to relations with Russia have accepted significant costs. This solidarity—imperfect but real—is your most enduring diplomatic failure.

The Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, signed by 36 states, is being established in The Hague. International legal isolation is advancing in parallel with economic isolation. Your legacy will not be the imperial grandeur you sought—it will be a list of sanctions and indictments.

Putin gambled on Western division, on democratic fatigue, and on Trump as an unwitting ally. Each of these gambles has partially backfired. The sanctions are holding. Ukraine is holding firm. Trump is praising Zelensky. And Russian gasoline production has fallen by 25%. This is the record of a strategist who both underestimated his enemies and overestimated his own strengths.

The Energy War of Attrition

The battle over Russian energy resources is at the heart of a broader economic war of attrition. Ukraine is striking refineries. The G7 is capping prices. Sanctions are limiting imports of technologies needed to modernize oil infrastructure. Each additional layer of pressure complicates the long-term maintenance and development of Russia’s energy sector.

Foreign investment in Russian hydrocarbons has plummeted since 2022. Western drilling and extraction technologies are no longer available. The most productive oil fields are aging without the equipment needed to maintain them. In this context, the export ban that you have just extended, Mr. Putin, is not a display of power—it is a response to scarcity.

A Russia Increasingly Dependent on China

The forced reorientation of your oil exports toward China and India, at sharply reduced prices, represents a growing dependence on partners who treat you as a subordinate supplier, not as an equal strategic partner. Beijing buys your oil at substantial discounts. So does Delhi. You no longer dictate the terms—you accept them, because you have no other choice.

This dependence on China is not without risk for Russia in the long term. Beijing has its own interests, and they do not always align with yours. Russia is in the process of transforming from an autonomous energy superpower into an economic appendage of China—and this is a direct consequence of your war in Ukraine.

Russia, the world’s leading gas power, is dependent on China to sell its oil at rock-bottom prices. This is not the sovereign superpower that Putin sold to his compatriots. It is the reality of a catastrophic strategic choice—a war that has transformed an energy-dominant state into a subordinate supplier to a China that owes Moscow no obligation of loyalty.

How the Price Cap Is Affecting Russian Revenues

The G7 price cap—set at $60 per barrel for Russian oil—is one of the most significant economic innovations in the West’s response to the war. Its mechanism is elegant: shipping companies, insurers, and service providers from G7 countries may only participate in the transport of Russian oil if it is sold below this threshold. Any transaction above the cap excludes Western players—who account for a substantial portion of global shipping and marine insurance capacity.

The effects are real, even if difficult to quantify precisely. Russia has had to develop a “ghost fleet” of aging, uninsured oil tankers to circumvent the mechanism—with the environmental and operational risks that this entails. Several oil spill incidents have already been attributed to these dilapidated vessels. And the additional cost of circumventing the cap—logistics, insurance, infrastructure—erodes the actual revenue that Putin can reinvest in his war economy.

The Russian ghost fleet—rusty, uninsured oil tankers crisscrossing the seas—is a perfect metaphor for the Russian economy in 2026. Shiny on the surface, decaying beneath. This is not a victorious war economy. It is an economy of survival, improvising makeshift solutions while its true capabilities erode.

Ukraine Targets the Lifelines of the Russian Economy

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries—in Krasnodar Krai, Yaroslavl Oblast, and the Moscow region—are not merely military operations. They are strategic decisions aimed at degrading the productive capacity of a war economy. Russian refineries produce the fuel that powers tanks, aircraft, and military logistics trucks. By crippling them, Ukraine is creating a cascade of shortages that complicate every aspect of Russia’s war effort.

The result is clear: fuel rationing in Siberia, shortages in occupied Crimea, and a 25% drop in gasoline production in June 2026 compared to pre-war levels. Putin himself has acknowledged—a rare occurrence—that Ukrainian strikes are contributing to the shortages. This unintended transparency is the best proof that Ukraine’s strategy is working.

Putin has admitted that Ukrainian strikes on refineries are causing fuel shortages. This is not a propaganda victory—it is a strategic admission. The Kremlin never acknowledges its failures unless forced to do so by visible reality. When Putin admits that Ukraine is effectively striking at his economic rear, it means the situation is far worse than he claims publicly.

Europe After Its Dependence on Russian Natural Gas

In 2021, Europe imported about 40% of its natural gas from Russia. By June 2026, that dependence had collapsed. U.S. LNG, Norwegian gas, Mediterranean interconnections, and the accelerated expansion of renewable energy have restructured Europe’s energy supply in less than four years. What seemed impossible in 2022—doing without Russian gas without economic disaster—has been achieved, at the cost of considerable effort and high expenses, but achieved nonetheless.

This transformation is structurally irreversible. The LNG terminals built on an emergency basis in Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy constitute new, permanent infrastructure. The long-term contracts signed with alternative suppliers span decades. A return to Russian gas—even if the war were to end tomorrow—is politically and economically unlikely. Europe has learned its lesson—and it is not turning back.

Russia’s energy weapon has been defused by Europe itself, through real economic sacrifices and courageous political decisions. This is perhaps one of the most significant strategic transformations of the decade—and it would never have happened without Russian aggression. Putin has accelerated exactly what he wanted to prevent: European energy independence.

The Price of Aggression

Mr. Putin, your energy gamble has failed. The weapon you’ve been brandishing for two decades—Europe’s dependence on Russian gas and oil—has backfired. Europe has diversified its sources. Ukrainian drones have reduced your production. The price cap has eroded your revenues. And now you’re extending your own export ban because you lack the fuel to power your war economy.

A lesson for the world’s autocrats

This letter is also addressed to others—leaders who are watching Russia and calculating whether the same strategy of energy intimidation, territorial aggression, or economic blackmail might work for them. The Ukrainian and Western response to your war demonstrates that these strategies have limits. That the resilience of democracies is greater than autocrats assume. And that economic weapons can, in the long run, backfire on those who wield them. That is the most important lesson of your June 26, 2026.

Mr. Putin, you launched this war with one conviction: that the West was too dependent on your energy to resist. That conviction was wrong. You underestimated the willingness of democracies to pay a price for their values. You underestimated Ukraine’s resilience. And you underestimated the ability of Ukrainian engineers, policymakers, and soldiers to strike you where it hurts—in your refineries, in your space facilities, in your war economy. That is the lesson of June 2026.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist