A Difficult Choice for the Kremlin: The Russian Federation will have to sacrifice aircraft from the front to protect their refinery - Forbes
According to the source, Ukraine hopes that attacks on oil facilities will undermine Moscow's financial resources, complicate its military logistics and cause discontent among Russian citizens. However, analysts warn that such strokes, although harmful to the Russian Federation and complicate logistics, have no significant impact on the total volume of oil processing during the year.
"Perhaps more important for Ukrainian forces is that drone attacks can force the Kremlin to remove valuable air defense systems from the front line and place them around the oil infrastructure," the newspaper writes. Forbes notes that in an attempt to strengthen its air defense system, Moscow has recently revised the export of two batteries of anti-aircraft missile systems C-400 to New Delhi, delaying them for two years-from 2024 to 2026.
In addition, according to British intelligence, plans for the placement of the anti-aircraft missile complex "shell" near energy objects are already being developed. "Increasing the protection of oil refineries, Russians can agree to less protection around air deves, ports, staffs and other military facilities, which will make them easier to target," Forbes writes. Russia places its most powerful air defense products over a wide area and reduces their concentration, which makes them vulnerable.
This fact is confirmed by the impact of Ukrainian missiles on the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, which resulted in the damage to two landing ships of the Russian Federation. "The Kremlin may be inevitable for the choice: to protect oil refineries or to protect advanced forces, and it is likely that it will not be possible to do both," - forbes said.