Russia’s colossal missile attack that killed 23 people yesterday at Kyiv could be a reprisal for Ukraine’s growing missile campaign against Russia’s oil refineries, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, says.

“Ukraine recently dealt a blow to Russia’s oil refineries,” the spokeswoman told reporters yesterday at the White House. “They have taken out 20 percent of Russia’s oil refinery capacity over the course of their attacks throughout the  month of August. The president is continuing to watch this intently.”

Winning the attention of the White House and the Kremlin, Ukraine’s new mastery of long-distance missile technology may herald a future chapter in the otherwise stalemated three-and-a-half-year Russia-Ukraine war. 

Seeking to deprive Russia of oil export revenue and to starve its military of diesel, Ukraine hit 10 different refineries in August. Encountering poor air defenses, the Ukrainians return to hit several again and again.

“It’s about to get worse for Russia’s battered oil industry as new, harder-hitting Ukrainian cruise missiles come on-line in greater numbers,” an American military blogger, David Axe, wrote Wednesday. 

In a post headlined “Ukraine’s missiles could cut off the $9 billion Putin uses to pay soldiers,” Mr. Axe added: “Kyiv’s goal should be to permanently throttle Russian refining, with knock-on effects on state revenues—and on gasoline prices.”

Ukrainian missiles and drones severely damaged Russia’s Druzhba east-west oil export pipeline and its Ust-Luga oil and gas export port on the Baltic. Reuters predicts that Ust-Luga, one of Russia’s most modern post-Soviet ports, will operate at only half capacity in September.

Ukrainian drones attacks hit the Druzhba pipeline four times this month, enraging two of Ukraine’s western neighbors, Hungary and Slovakia. The governments of both countries reap benefits by importing Russian oil at below market prices. 

If the Druzhba is permanently cut, this could change the Central European chessboard, moving the two countries toward the West, and away from the Kremlin.

While the region’s internet lights up with mini-videos of oily orange explosions at refineries, Ukraine is waging another kind of air war, this one largely invisible but equally effective. It is quietly pounding key rail hubs in otherwise forgettable places that Muscovites consider flyover territory: Kamenolomni, Kryazh, Likhaya, Liski, Petrov Val, Peschanokopskoye, Salsk, Tatsinskaya, and Timashevsk.

Oil and gas are Russia’s economic lifeblood. The railways are the nation’s interstate highway system. In the 1830s, Russian-Ukrainian novelist Nikolai Gogol wrote: “There are two troubles in Russia: Fools and roads.” Two centuries later, Russia’s army moves by rail.

With 65,000 miles of track, Russia has the world’s third-largest rail system, after America and Communist China. Military supplies — artillery shells from North Korea, drone parts from China, or diesel from Siberia — all move by train.

Such a far-flung empire is virtually impossible to defend. Now, Russia’s internet increasingly shows evidence of attacks: a string of diesel tanker cars burning in Crimea, a locomotive torched by partisans in Arctic Komi, and a long-distance Ukrainian drone burning a rail junction station on the steppe.

“The enormous size of the Russian Federation and the vulnerability of its transport infrastructure are the trump cards of both Ukraine and the Russian Resistance,” posts a digital bulletin board for anti-Putin actions across the nation, Rospartizan. “Gasoline problems are growing due to drones burning down oil refineries and, again, due to air attacks on the railways used to transport fuel.”

A Russian news site now based in Latvia, Meduza, recently listed seven little-publicized attacks on Russian rail facilities during the second half of July. 

“A new pattern of Ukrainian drone strikes appears aimed at disrupting Russia’s rail network,” Meduza reported in a Russian-language article headlined: “Off the Rails.” Meduza adds that “in recent weeks, drones have hit stations, power systems, and trains, causing unprecedented delays.”

Blown-up sections of track are usually easy to fix. Track junctions, switches, and electrical substations are more difficult. Burnt out locomotives can be difficult to replace if they need imported parts. “The only way to ‘win’ a war is to stop your enemy from moving,” an American military historian, Phillips O’Brien, writes in his book: “How the Second World War Was Won.” 

Meanwhile, in the biggest bombing of Kyiv since World War II, Russia’s missiles and drones left 63 Ukrainian civilians wounded. 

“Last night Russia launched the second largest aerial attack of the war with 600 drones and 31 missiles,” President Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, posted on X. “The targets? Not soldiers and weapons but residential areas” at the capital city. 

He added that the Russians were “blasting civilian trains, the EU & British mission council offices, and innocent civilians. These egregious attacks threaten the peace that @POTUS is pursuing.”

The bombing of the capital seemed to signal that, two weeks after the Anchorage summit with Mr. Trump, President Vladimir Putin does not want to follow through on peace promises. Yesterday, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told reporters that it is “obvious”  that there will not be any Putin-Zelensky meeting soon.

Seeking to pump new life into the peace process, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is to meet today at New York with a high-ranking Ukrainian delegation.