B1 · Intermediate
14 min
energy marketseconomic warfaregeopolitics
Drones Over the Piggy Bank
Dos refinerías en llamas
Ukrainian drones hit two Russian oil refineries this week, triggering fires at facilities that sit at the heart of Russia's war budget. Fletcher and Octavio go deep on how energy infrastructure became the most consequential front in the economic war.
Dos drones ucranianos atacaron refinerías rusas en Yaroslavl y Bashneft esta semana, provocando grandes incendios. Fletcher y Octavio hablan de por qué quemar petróleo ruso no es solo una historia de guerra, sino una historia de economía.
6 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| refinería | refinery | Los drones atacaron una refinería importante en Rusia. |
| incendio | fire (large, destructive) | El incendio en la refinería duró varias horas. |
| petróleo | oil, petroleum | Rusia exporta mucho petróleo a China e India. |
| ingresos | revenues, income | Los ingresos del petróleo son muy importantes para el presupuesto ruso. |
| daños | damage | Los daños en la refinería fueron muy grandes después del ataque. |
| exportar | to export | Rusia exporta petróleo crudo a varios países de Asia. |
Thirty years covering wars, and it took me this long to understand that the most consequential battles don't always have soldiers in them.
Two Russian oil refineries burning this week, and my first thought wasn't military, it was financial.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Esta semana, drones ucranianos atacaron dos refinerías importantes en Rusia: una en Yaroslavl, al norte de Moscú, y otra de Bashneft en Bashkortostán, en los Urales.
This week, Ukrainian drones attacked two major refineries in Russia: one in Yaroslavl, north of Moscow, and another owned by Bashneft in Bashkortostan, in the Urals.
Los dos tuvieron incendios muy grandes.
Both had very large fires.
And for listeners who want to picture these on a map, Yaroslavl is about 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, a major industrial city.
Bashkortostan is further east, closer to the Ural mountains.
These aren't fringe operations, they're core facilities.
Sí.
Yes.
Y Bashneft no es una empresa cualquiera.
And Bashneft is not just any company.
Es parte de Rosneft, que es básicamente la empresa de petróleo del estado ruso.
It is part of Rosneft, which is basically the Russian state's oil company.
Cuando atacas Bashneft, atacas directamente el dinero del gobierno de Putin.
When you attack Bashneft, you are directly attacking Putin's government money.
Right, and that's what makes this story a business story as much as a military one.
Russia's federal budget in recent years has depended on oil and gas for somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of its revenues.
The exact number shifts with prices, but the dependence is structural.
Rusia tiene mucho petróleo, sí, pero el problema es que necesita refinerías para convertir el petróleo crudo en productos útiles: gasolina, diésel, combustible para aviones.
Russia has a lot of oil, yes, but the problem is that it needs refineries to convert crude oil into useful products: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel.
Sin refinerías, el petróleo crudo no sirve de mucho.
Without refineries, crude oil is not much use.
Which is precisely why Ukraine has been targeting them rather than just trying to hit the oil fields themselves.
The fields are spread across enormous territory, often in Siberia, basically unreachable.
But refineries are fixed infrastructure, they sit in cities, and they're closer to the front.
Y no es la primera vez.
And it is not the first time.
Desde 2024, Ucrania atacó muchas refinerías rusas con drones.
Since 2024, Ukraine attacked many Russian refineries with drones.
La refinería de Saratov, la de Riazán, varias en el sur.
The Saratov refinery, the one in Ryazan, several in the south.
Es una campaña larga y sistemática.
It is a long and systematic campaign.
Systematic is the right word.
I was looking at estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics, which has been tracking this, and by some counts Ukraine had disrupted Russian refining capacity by something like 12 to 15 percent at peak.
That is not symbolic, that is an economic wound.
Claro.
Right.
Y cuando baja la producción de diésel en Rusia, los precios suben dentro del país.
And when diesel production drops in Russia, prices go up inside the country.
Los agricultores rusos necesitan diésel para sus máquinas.
Russian farmers need diesel for their machines.
Los camioneros también.
Truckers too.
Es un problema real para la economía doméstica.
It is a real problem for the domestic economy.
There was actually a moment in late 2023, early 2024, where Russia had to ban diesel exports temporarily because domestic supply was getting tight.
A country that sits on some of the largest hydrocarbon reserves on earth ran short of diesel at the pump.
That's a stunning failure of industrial capacity.
Y eso fue antes de estos ataques.
And that was before these attacks.
La situación ahora es peor.
The situation now is worse.
Rusia perdió mucho tiempo y mucho dinero reparando refinerías dañadas.
Russia spent a lot of time and a lot of money repairing damaged refineries.
Algunas nunca volvieron al cien por cien de su capacidad.
Some never returned to one hundred percent of their capacity.
Let's talk about the Bashneft angle for a moment, because I think it's the more interesting one historically.
Bashneft has this strange corporate biography.
It was privatized in the nineties, renationalized under Putin, then used as a weapon in the Rosneft takeover of AFK Sistema in 2017.
It's a company whose ownership history basically mirrors how Putin consolidated power.
Sí, es verdad.
Yes, that is true.
Putin usó las empresas de petróleo como instrumentos políticos durante muchos años.
Putin used oil companies as political instruments for many years.
Yukos, Bashneft, Rosneft, todo forma parte de la misma historia: el estado toma control de los recursos energéticos y los usa para tener poder.
Yukos, Bashneft, Rosneft, it all forms part of the same story: the state takes control of energy resources and uses them to have power.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Yukos.
That whole story still gives me chills when I think about what it meant for Russian capitalism.
He was the richest man in Russia, openly funding opposition politics, and within two years he was in a Siberian prison and his company was gone.
That was 2003, 2004.
It was the signal to every other oligarch: the energy sector belongs to the Kremlin.
Y ese control del petróleo es la base de todo lo demás.
And that control of oil is the foundation of everything else.
El ejército, los salarios de los funcionarios, los proyectos de infraestructura, la propaganda.
The army, the salaries of civil servants, infrastructure projects, propaganda.
Si el dinero del petróleo baja, todo el sistema tiene problemas.
If the oil money goes down, the whole system has problems.
This is the thing I keep coming back to.
Ukraine can't outproduce Russia in artillery shells, it can't match Russia in raw manpower, not without unlimited Western support.
But an economic strategy, bleeding the revenue base, that's a different kind of leverage.
It's asymmetric in a way that a drone costing maybe fifty thousand dollars hitting a facility worth hundreds of millions is almost poetic.
Poético, sí, pero también muy peligroso.
Poetic, yes, but also very dangerous.
Porque Rusia respondió atacando la infraestructura energética de Ucrania también.
Because Russia responded by attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure too.
Las centrales eléctricas, las redes de calefacción.
Power plants, heating networks.
Este invierno pasado fue muy difícil para muchas ciudades ucranianas.
This past winter was very hard for many Ukrainian cities.
The energy war within the war.
Kherson losing total power overnight this week from Russian drone attacks, that's not a coincidence alongside these refinery strikes.
There's a tit-for-tat logic here that goes back to early 2022.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y los dos países saben que la energía es el punto débil del otro.
And both countries know that energy is the other's weak point.
Rusia depende de los ingresos del petróleo.
Russia depends on oil revenues.
Ucrania depende de tener electricidad y calefacción para que su población pueda vivir y trabajar.
Ukraine depends on having electricity and heating so its population can live and work.
Let me ask you something.
From a purely economic standpoint, who's winning that exchange right now?
Because Russia has been sanctioned, it's rerouted a lot of its oil trade to India and China, the shadow fleet is running.
Is the damage to its refining capacity actually hurting its bottom line in a meaningful way?
Buena pregunta.
Good question.
Yo creo que sí duele, pero no es mortal todavía.
I think it does hurt, but it is not fatal yet.
Rusia todavía exporta mucho petróleo crudo.
Russia still exports a lot of crude oil.
El problema es que el petróleo crudo vale menos que los productos refinados.
The problem is that crude oil is worth less than refined products.
Si no puedes refinar, pierdes dinero.
If you cannot refine, you lose money.
The value-added argument.
Processing crude into diesel or jet fuel, you might be adding 30, 40 percent to the value of that barrel.
Every refinery that's out of commission is money Russia collects at the wellhead but never fully captures downstream.
Y también hay otro problema.
And there is another problem too.
Las empresas occidentales que antes ayudaban a mantener las refinerías rusas, con tecnología y piezas de repuesto, se fueron después de 2022.
The Western companies that used to help maintain Russian refineries, with technology and spare parts, left after 2022.
Ahora Rusia tiene más dificultades para reparar los daños.
Now Russia has more difficulty repairing the damage.
Sanctions plus drones equals a compounding problem.
This is actually a case where the sanctions architecture and the military strategy are working in the same direction, which hasn't always been true in this conflict.
Sí, aunque hay que ser honesto: el petróleo ruso todavía llega a los mercados mundiales.
Yes, although we have to be honest: Russian oil still reaches world markets.
India compró mucho petróleo ruso en 2024 y 2025.
India bought a lot of Russian oil in 2024 and 2025.
China también.
China too.
Las sanciones no cerraron el grifo completamente.
The sanctions did not completely close the tap.
The shadow fleet.
I wrote something about this last year actually, there are now, by some estimates, over 400 tankers operating outside Western insurance and tracking systems, moving Russian crude to buyers who don't want to be seen buying it.
It's one of the more creative workarounds to sanctions that I've come across.
Y eso muestra algo importante: cuando hay mucho dinero en juego, siempre hay personas dispuestas a buscar soluciones alternativas.
And that shows something important: when there is a lot of money at stake, there are always people willing to find alternative solutions.
Las sanciones funcionan mejor cuando todos las respetan.
Sanctions work best when everyone respects them.
Cuando no, el sistema tiene agujeros.
When they do not, the system has holes.
That said, there's a difference between selling crude at a discount to India through a shadow fleet versus selling premium refined products through European terminals at full market price, which is what Russia was doing before 2022.
The sanctions and the drone campaign together have definitively closed the more profitable chapter of Russia's energy business.
Pero mira, también tengo que decir esto: todo el mundo habla de la economía rusa como si estuviera a punto de colapsar.
But look, I also have to say this: everyone talks about the Russian economy as if it were about to collapse.
Y lleva cuatro años así.
And it has been like that for four years.
El colapso no llegó.
The collapse did not come.
Fair.
And I don't want to oversell the strategic impact here.
Russia adapted.
It redirected trade, it built domestic substitutes where it could, it ran deficits and printed money.
The ruble took a beating but didn't disappear.
Putin's political position hasn't visibly weakened.
So yes, the economic pressure is real, but it hasn't been decisive.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y eso es lo difícil de las guerras económicas.
And that is what is hard about economic wars.
Son lentas.
They are slow.
No ganas en un día.
You do not win in one day.
El efecto acumulativo de los ataques a las refinerías, más las sanciones, más el coste de la guerra, puede tardar años en manifestarse de verdad.
The cumulative effect of the refinery attacks, plus sanctions, plus the cost of the war, can take years to truly manifest.
There's historical precedent for that argument.
Allied bombing of German synthetic fuel plants in 1944 didn't bring the Reich down immediately, but by early 1945 the Luftwaffe was grounded because there was no aviation fuel.
The timeline is months and years, not days.
Buen ejemplo histórico, Fletcher.
Good historical example, Fletcher.
Y también hay que pensar en los mercados mundiales.
And we also have to think about world markets.
Cuando hay incendios grandes en refinerías rusas, los precios del petróleo pueden subir un poco en los mercados internacionales.
When there are large fires at Russian refineries, oil prices can rise a little on international markets.
No mucho, pero lo suficiente para que otros países productores estén contentos.
Not much, but enough for other producer countries to be pleased.
Which creates this perverse dynamic where Saudi Arabia and other OPEC producers passively benefit from Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian infrastructure.
Nobody says that out loud, but it's arithmetically true.
Sí, la geopolítica del petróleo siempre es complicada.
Yes, the geopolitics of oil is always complicated.
Hay intereses en todas partes.
There are interests everywhere.
Pero para Ucrania, el objetivo es claro: hacer la guerra más cara para Rusia.
But for Ukraine, the objective is clear: make the war more expensive for Russia.
Cada refinería dañada es menos dinero para comprar misiles, menos dinero para pagar soldados.
Every damaged refinery is less money to buy missiles, less money to pay soldiers.
And here's where it closes a loop for me.
The drones hitting Yaroslavl and Bashkortostan this week aren't just operational news, they're a data point in a four-year experiment in whether economic attrition can substitute for territorial victory.
Ukraine is essentially asking: can we make this war too expensive for Russia to continue?
That question doesn't have a clean answer yet.
No tiene respuesta clara, no.
It does not have a clear answer, no.
Pero hay algo interesante en cómo Ucrania comunica estos ataques.
But there is something interesting in how Ukraine communicates these attacks.
No dice solo 'destruimos una refinería'.
It does not just say 'we destroyed a refinery.' It says 'we eliminated a source of war financing.' It is an economic message, not just a military one.
Dice 'eliminamos una fuente de financiación de la guerra'.
Es un mensaje económico, no solo militar.
The framing matters enormously.
That's a lesson from every war I've covered, actually, how a side narrates its actions shapes how the international community responds to them.
'We hit a fuel facility' gets one reaction.
'We reduced Russia's ability to fund its military by X percent this quarter' gets a very different one in Brussels and Washington.
Oye, Fletcher, una cosa.
Hey, Fletcher, one thing.
Usé la palabra 'incendio' varias veces hoy.
I used the word 'incendio' several times today.
Y tú dijiste 'fire' en inglés.
And you said 'fire' in English.
¿Sabes cuándo usamos 'incendio' y cuándo 'fuego' en español?
Do you know when we use 'incendio' and when 'fuego' in Spanish?
Honestly, I assumed they were interchangeable.
Both mean fire, right?
I have been using them that way for years, which, knowing my track record with Spanish, probably means I've been getting it wrong.
Casi siempre, no.
Almost always, no.
'Fuego' es el fuego en general: el fuego de una chimenea, el fuego para cocinar, también un concepto.
'Fuego' is fire in general: the fire in a fireplace, the fire for cooking, also a concept.
'Incendio' es un fuego grande y destructivo, un fuego que no queremos, como en una refinería o un bosque.
'Incendio' is a large, destructive fire, a fire we do not want, like in a refinery or a forest.
Un incendio es siempre un problema.
An incendio is always a problem.
So 'fuego' can be good or neutral, a campfire, a lit match, passion in a metaphorical sense.
But 'incendio' is always bad news.
It's what firefighters respond to.
If someone knocks on your door and says 'hay un incendio,' you leave the building.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y 'bomberos' vienen de la palabra 'bomba', que aquí no significa explosivo, sino la bomba de agua.
And 'bomberos' comes from the word 'bomba', which here does not mean explosive, but the water pump.
Los bomberos son los que usan la bomba de agua para apagar el incendio.
Firefighters are the ones who use the water pump to put out the fire.
El español tiene esa lógica interna si la buscas.
Spanish has that internal logic if you look for it.
So 'bombero' literally means pump operator, not bomb person.
I will admit that is genuinely interesting, and it also makes me slightly relieved that I've never had to call the fire department in Spanish.
Given my history with the language, I would have almost certainly told them something was very pregnant.