Refinery Attacks and North Korea

Let’s start with the increasing number of refinery attacks. This is the latest; it happened overnight. They matter because Russia not only needs the gas for the war machine; Russia is a petro-state. Even with sanctions, it is the best way to get hard currency. So this matters:

In Russia, on the night of June 18, in addition to the oil depot in Azov, Rostov region, an oil depot in the Temryuk district of the Krasnodar Territory was also attacked. This was reported by the Russian publication ASTRA. There are no photos of objective control yet, and yes, the attack on the oil depot is extremely good. Still, something else is curious: this is a message about another attack using Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles.

This is not the first time we have heard about these missiles attacking ground targets in the Russian Federation; there have also previously been official statements from Ukraine about their use. And yesterday, the Ukrainian military portal Defense Express published interesting photos from the Ukrainian pavilion at the Eurosatory 2024 exhibition in France, where you can see interesting, unnamed, cruise missiles.

As I have said many times, Ukraine needs to achieve an independent (independent of arms supply) ability to hit Moscow with accurate and powerful weapons — these are cruise and ballistic missiles. Russia, as a…