“The Druzhba oil pipeline is taking a rest,” crowed Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, Ukraine’s drone chief, on August 18. “Greetings from the Birds of the Unmanned Systems Forces.”
The strike, the second in less than a week, took out the 4,000km (2,500-mile) pipeline, bringing to an indefinite halt oil flows which had been supplying Central Europe via Ukraine and Belarus since the early 1960s.
The language was tongue-in-cheek, but the destruction of the Nikolskoye oil pumping station in Russia’s Tambov region by Ukraine’s 14th Drone Regiment was hardly a laughing matter, especially for Hungary and Slovakia, which have an established addiction to cheap Russian energy.
The two Kremlin-friendly states, the only remaining buyers of Russian oil, lashed out, claiming the latest attack on their energy security was “outrageous and unacceptable.”
Ukraine has a poor relationship with both countries and little reason to consider their feelings, given their record of blocking aid to Kyiv within the European Union (EU). So the attack may have been partly intended as payback for this, and for Hungary’s refusal, alone among EU members, to co-sign a statement supportive of Ukraine ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin on August 15.
But there are broader implications. The attack was arguably part of a much wider and sophisticated geopolitical battle that is now being fought out from Central Asia in the east to the heart of Europe in the west.
Since the start of the year, Ukrainian long-range missiles have struck military and energy installations deep inside Russia, causing damage that the Ukrainian General Staff claims to be worth over $74bn, the equivalent of 4.11% of Russia’s annual GDP.
Close to 80% of these attacks targeted oil refineries and depots, triggering domestic fuel shortages and impairing Russia’s ability to supply oil products to military hubs closer to the Ukrainian border.
However, since the beginning of August, a sequence of Ukrainian and Russian strikes against oil or gas installations suggests the two countries’ targeting has moved well outside the confines of the current battlefield and deep into the Eurasian landmass.
On August 2, Ukrainian intelligence sources indicated the Central Asia-Center gas pipeline linking Russia to Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan had been shut down indefinitely following explosions along the route in the Volgograd region.
Historically, the transmission network had been used to transport Central Asian gas to Russia, but since 2023, flows have been reversed, allowing Russia’s Gazprom to reach new consumers after losing most of its market share in Europe.
Four days later, on August 6, the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy said Russia had hit a metering station on the Trans-Balkan pipeline, close to the Romanian border.
The corridor had been used to transport Russian gas, but after 2020, shipments were diverted to TurkStream, allowing regional companies to import gas from elsewhere via the Trans-Balkan lines.
In August, for the first time, Ukraine’s Naftogaz was importing small volumes of Azerbaijani-sourced gas via this route.
On August 8, Russia continued its attacks in the region close to Odesa, hitting an oil depot owned by the Azerbaijani oil and gas producer SOCAR. The facility was initially damaged, but a subsequent attack by 15 Russian drones completely destroyed it.
Ukraine appears to have followed a similar pattern, hitting and initially damaging a pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline in the Bryansk region on August 13 before striking and fully disabling flows on the pipe five days later.
The goals of the Ukrainian and Russian attacks on August 18, just hours before a visit by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to Washington to negotiate the terms of a possible peace agreement, went much further than simply disabling some energy installations supplying military operations.
Ukraine and Azerbaijan have been growing closer in recent months.
Russia’s shooting down of an Azerbaijani airline on Christmas Day, security services raids against Azerbaijanis in Russia, the recent killing of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg, and Russia’s apparent involvement in the contamination of Azerbaijani oil exports to Romania have brought Baku closer to Kyiv.
Azerbaijan has been stepping up aid to Ukraine and is ramping up mass production of badly needed 122mm and 155mm shells.
Furthermore, the US recently brokered a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which lays the foundations for a 40km corridor connecting Azerbaijan proper to Turkey via Armenia and Azerbaijan’s exclave Nakhchivan, and gives Washington a 99-year mandate to oversee the operation of this lucrative corridor. This upends decades of Russian regional influence and caused anger in Moscow.
It also enables Azerbaijan and potentially neighbouring Turkmenistan to direct their oil and gas resources westwards along the new route, further undermining Russia’s role as an energy supplier in Central Asia and Europe.
Ukraine’s recent attack on the Central Asia-Center gas pipeline, impairing Gazprom’s access to Central Asian markets as well as its political rapprochement with Azerbaijan, points to Kyiv’s growing presence in Central Asia and the Caspian region, and to growing problems for the Kremlin.
Dr. Aura Sabadus is a senior energy journalist writing for Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), a London-based global energy and petrochemicals news and market data provider. She is also a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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