In Just 7 Days… Ukraine Took EVERYTHING Away From Russia

A week is a long time in war.

Anything can happen.

And for Russia, seven short days could transform what was promising to be a revived oil export
economy into a flaming mess caused by Ukrainian deep strikes.

Of course, that’s precisely what
has happened, as Russia has been forced to endure seven days of hell that have snatched everything
away.

Ukraine did in one week what sanctions have failed to do for years, and all Russia can do
is pick through the flaming wreckage.

First, we take you to March 31.

That’s when the news broke
that Ukraine had carried out a deep strike against Russia’s vital Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga.

The attack against a massive oil complex that is responsible for processing 700,000 barrels of
oil exports every single day, in addition to other exports, such as grains, fertilizers, and coal,
was a shot against a Baltic Sea export network that handles 40% of Russia’s oil sales.

That
alone would have been very bad news for Putin.

But what we saw on March 31 wasn’t a one-off.

If anything, it was more like a victory lap, as it was the exclamation point on a week-long
series of deep strikes that targeted Ust-Luga and Russia’s other key Baltic port, Primorsk.

In
fact, the March 31 attack represented the fourth time in a single week that Ukraine’s drones
had come crashing down on Ust-Luga, and that sustained pressure sends a very clear message to
Putin that the oil infrastructure he once thought was safe is now a target.

Scratch that, it’s not
just a target.

It’s something that Ukraine can hit at will.

The same goes for Primorsk, which has
been justifiably victimized by repeated Ukrainian strikes during a week of hell for Russia that
must have felt like it would have no end.

United24 Media provides the details, noting that Ukraine’s
campaign against Putin’s Baltic Sea ports began on March 23 with a handful of what seemed to
be isolated strikes.

Ukraine had unleashed its flying sanctions once more, seemingly as a
response to Russia’s ability to capitalize on the chaos in Iran right now, but that was surely
all that it was going to be.

And if it had been, it would have been enough.

The March 23
attack caused multiple explosions at Primorsk, along with fires at fuel tanks that are key to the
operation of a port that can store 921,000 tons of crude oil and 240,000 tons of petroleum
products when it’s operating at its peak.

But what seemed like an isolated attack proved
to be anything but.

Ukraine followed up.

Day after day, drones have rained down on Ust-Luga and
Primorsk in a terrific campaign that is far larger and stronger than anything that Putin could have
anticipated.

These ports were supposed to be safe.

That’s why Russia was using them.

But Ukraine’s
drones have been traveling hundreds of miles, evading air defenses or simply not encountering
them at all, to cause seven days of sorrow for the sadistic leader who ordered the invasion of
Ukraine’s territory.

After that week from hell, Russia has to face up to a fact: Everything is
burning in Ust-Luga and Primorsk.

And the results speak for themselves.

Three fuel storage tankers
at Ust-Luga were destroyed in a March 29 attack.

Those tanks had a combined capacity of 90,000 tons
of oil, all of which is burning along with the ruined shells of the tanks that once contained
it.

Ukraine’s March 25 strike against the same port took out five fuel storage tanks, which
is another 150,000 tons of oil up in flames, along with hitting a trio of shadow fleet tankers
docked at the port.

Similar damage has been seen at Primorsk, and Russia has been forced to
completely halt all oil loading several times over the past week as it puts out fires, assesses
damage, and deals with the fact that weeks, if not months, of maintenance are going to be
needed to get its destroyed ports back to anywhere near the capacity that they once had.

And even if
that repair work starts, Russia knows that Ukraine can just target the ports again.

Nothing could
stop them during the seven days of hell.

It’s not likely that Russia will be able to do much
of anything about future strikes, either.

The sailing of the shadow fleet tankers, or, should we
say, the lack thereof, is also revealing.

During the week between March 23 and March 31, only four
tankers were loaded at Primorsk.

The usual number is 10.

Ukraine cut down tanker loading volume by
60%.

At Ust-Luga, it was even higher, as only two of a typical eight tankers have been loaded for an
80% decline.

And of course, fewer loaded tankers lead to less oil sold.

From a typical figure
of 4.

1 million barrels exported every day, Russia’s oil sales have tumbled to just 2.

3
million barrels.

That’s 1.

8 million barrels that aren’t being sold every day at a time when Russia
is trying to make hay while the sun shines due to oil prices rocketing up in the wake of Operation
Epic Fury.

Of course, fewer barrels being sold also means less revenue generated by Russia’s
oil industry.

A March 31 United24 Media report has the details.

It says that the average price of
Russia’s Urals crude had risen by $11.

30, hitting a high of $73.

24 per barrel, as a result of the
war in Iran.

But despite this sharp increase, the week of hell that Ukraine inflicted on Russia
with its flying sanctions led to Russia only generating $1.

44 billion for the week ending March
29.

The previous week has seen Russia’s oil giants earn revenue of $2.

45 billion, so that’s over $1
billion of oil revenue that the Kremlin can’t tax for the war in Ukraine.

That’s the entire point.

Russia thought that it had been thrown an economic lifeline in the Ukraine war, as a combination
of Western sanction failures and rapidly rising oil prices would allow it to generate billions of
dollars more in oil revenue.

And then, something changed.

Ukraine took aim with its drones
and hit its targets over and over again.

Now, the hay that Russia wanted to make while the sun
shone has ignited under the firepower that Ukraine has delivered to the Baltic ports.

In just seven
days, Ukraine has managed to do what sanctions have failed to do for years, and it has placed a
Russian economy that, for a moment, had a brief glimmer of hope on the fast track to complete
ruination.

We’ll be coming back to Russia’s economic issues later.

First, let’s home in on
the sanctions failures to which it could be argued that Ukraine’s week of whittling away at Russia’s
energy exports is a direct response to.

It would be unfair to claim that Western sanctions are a
complete and total failure against the Russian war machine.

They have indeed taken a bit out
of Putin’s ability to wage war, as the Economics Observatory points out.

Between the start of
Putin’s invasion and August 2025, the outlet says, Western sanctions have cost Russia about $100
billion in revenue that can no longer be used to pay soldiers or build equipment for use in
Ukraine.

That’s a good result; there is no denying that.

However, the problem lies in the fact that
$100 billion for a little over three years pales in comparison to the amount of money that Russia
has still been able to generate from the sales of oil and gas.

In 2024 alone, the observatory
points out, Russia was able to generate $235 billion from its oil and gas exports.

This was
despite sanctions, and it was actually 0.

5% more than the amount generated in 2023, and only 3.

7%
less than the revenue generated in 2021, which was the year after the COVID-19 pandemic crippled oil
sales.

These aren’t the kinds of sweeping results that Ukraine needed to see from sanctions, and
they have had the consequence of affording Putin far more money than he should have to fund his
invasion of Ukraine.

Throw the shadow fleet into the mix, which Putin is believed to have spent
well over $14 billion building and is responsible for even more illicit oil and gas money flowing
into Russia, and you get a problem.

The West’s sanctions are good on paper.

They’re also having
an effect.

But they don’t go far enough, and it could be argued that the enforcement of those
sanctions hasn’t lived up to the promise of what they’re supposed to deliver.

Then, Operation Epic
Fury and Operation Roaring Lion were launched.

That joint operation against Iran, as effective
as it has been as a display of pure American firepower, has added to the sanctions issue by
throwing Russia a lifeline, albeit one that isn’t as strong as Putin wants it to be.

But while
we’re on this, if this is the kind of insight that you want to see, remember to subscribe to The
Military Show.

We break it down like this every single week.

There are plenty of arguments for and
against the continuation of Operation Epic Fury, but the one thing that everybody can agree on
is that it has caused chaos in energy markets.

Iran’s decision to blockade the Strait of
Hormuz through the use of asymmetric tactics has directly influenced the rising oil prices
that we mentioned earlier.

And for the first few weeks of the conflict, Putin and his cronies
were all smiles as the oil money started rolling in.

In a March 12 report, The Guardian noted that
Russia had managed to rake in about €6 billion, or $6.

93 billion, from fossil fuel sales during
the first two weeks or so of the war in Iran.

That represented a 14% surge over the same period
in February, amounting to an extra €672 million, or about $776 million, in oil, gas, and coal
sales.

That’s all extra money that Russia wasn’t supposed to make and that the Kremlin can tax
to fund Putin’s invasion.

By the end of March, Business Insider was reporting that Russia’s
oil was selling at above global prices due to the supply shock caused by the Iran war.

Russia’s
oil had gone from being traded at a $12 discount to selling for a $4 premium compared to North Sea
Dated oil, which is the exact opposite effect that sanctions and price caps are supposed to have.

Speaking of sanctions, Putin has enjoyed another boon since the beginning of the Iran war.

Toward the end of March, the U.

S.

eased some of the sanctions that it had implemented against
Russia.

This isn’t a blanket lifting of sanctions, and it’s important to note that it is only
temporary.

But what it means is that certain Russian vessels that were once on America’s
sanction list, which includes oil container ships sailing under the Russian flag, have been given
a general license to complete their oil unloading operations.

The reprieve is only for cargo that
was loaded before March 12, RBC-Ukraine reports, and it is valid until April 11.

But even with
these restrictions, America’s decision has been met with mixed feelings.

On one hand, it’s
easy to see why the U.

S.

made this choice, as it likely sees the temporary lifting of sanctions as
a quick and easy, though by no means long-term, fix for the oil price shock caused by Operation
Epic Fury.

However, several Western leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and
French President Emmanuel Macron, have labeled the measure as unnecessary and, in Macron’s case,
“in no way” justified.

Even a temporary reprieve for Russia could open the door for more sanctions
relief in the future, especially if Operation Epic Fury evolves into a long-term campaign.

Ukrainian
President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, joined the condemnation, stating during a meeting with Macron
in France, “Lifting the sanctions will (.

.

.

) lead to a strengthening of Russia’s position.

This
easing alone by the United States could provide Russia with about $10 billion for the war.

That
certainly does not help peace.

” Now, of course, everything that the U.

S.

has done that helps
Russia is temporary.

The same could be said of the Strait of Hormuz blockade and the oil price chaos
that it has helped to cause.

U.

S.

President Donald Trump himself stated on April 1 that the U.

S.

is
“finishing the job” in Iran, though it will take another “two to three weeks” to do so.

We’ll have
to wait and see if that’s true.

If it is, then an end date to the chaos that has benefited Russia is
in sight.

But for Ukraine, any benefit at all to Russia is too much.

Rather than letting Putin get
away with generating more cash, both through poor implementation of past sanctions and everything
that has happened during Operation Epic Fury, Ukraine took the second option: If traditional
sanctions aren’t helping as much as they should, then a week’s worth of flying sanctions will do
the job.

And that brings us back to Ust-Luga, Primorsk, and Russia’s entire Baltic Sea oil
lifeline in general.

Plus, there’s one more thing that we’ve yet to cover, so stick with us to the
end to find out what that is.

Now, on the Baltic front, we’ve already shared plenty of numbers
covering the immediate impact of the seven days of hell.

Let’s now look at what Ukraine has achieved
through a wider lens.

According to The Atlantic Council, the two Baltic ports that Ukraine has
been shattering for seven days are responsible for 40% of all of Russia’s export capacity.

That is an enormous number, and Ukraine’s strikes against that capacity are causing plenty
of concern in and outside of Russia.

Oil and gas industry analyst Boris Aronshtein has already
labeled what we’ve seen in just a week as “the most serious threat to exports of Russian oil”
since Putin launched his invasion back in 2022.

That threat can be built on.

Ukraine has clearly
established pathways to the Baltic ports, and Russia has now had more than a week to respond to
them, but hasn’t.

These strikes are also evidence, were any more of it needed, that Ukraine has built
up its long-range strike capabilities to the point where it can hit a huge number of targets that
are of critical importance to Russia.

These are all signals to which Putin has to pay attention,
because Ukraine repeatedly hitting Russia’s Baltic ports is going to take them offline, perhaps for
the duration of the Ukraine war, assuming Ukraine continues deploying its flying sanctions.

Let’s
revisit the early oil sales success that Russia enjoyed during the first two weeks of Operation
Epic Fury.

We told you earlier that The Guardian reported that Russia made $6.

93 billion during the
first two weeks of the Iran war.

The Baltic ports haven’t been shut down completely by Ukraine,
but they’re edging closer.

If that happens, the $6.

93 billion for two weeks drops to $4.

158
billion, just by virtue of Russia losing 40% of its export capacity.

Let’s throw in the $235
billion figure we mentioned earlier, which was Russia’s 2024 oil and gas revenue.

That drops to
$141 billion when 40% of Russia’s export capacity is taken out of commission.

The point we’re making
here is that Ukraine’s flying sanctions have shown that the Russian economy can be impacted heavily
in as little as one week.

Imagine what Ukraine could achieve with a month of strikes.

Or a year.

The Baltic ports could be transformed into a hot zone that no tanker captain in their right mind
would want to enter, and that could pull billions upon billions of dollars out of Putin’s war purse.

And it gets better for Ukraine.

A moment ago, we told you that there is another thing that we’ve
yet to cover in this video.

That other thing is Siberia.

If Putin thinks that what’s happening
in Russia’s Baltic ports is a problem right now, he’ll be furious when he figures out how Ukraine
has been connecting the dots to create a campaign designed to cripple Russia’s economy.

United24 has
the details, as it points out that Ust-Luga and Primorsk are part of a Siberian oil supply chain
that includes the Druzhba pipeline and a pair of refineries – Kirishinefteorgsintez and Yaroslavl.

Collectively, these facilities are responsible for 2.

6 million of the nine million barrels
that Russia itself claims that it can produce every single day.

That’s almost a third of all of
Russia’s oil exports focused on these five sites.

Now, Ust-Luga and Primorsk are being hit so hard
that they’re forced to shut down.

The Druzhba pipeline has been shut down since January,
which is causing supply problems for Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and several other
central European countries.

That’s three of five dots connected.

Another comes into play when you
realize that the week of hell Ukraine inflicted on Russia also included a strike against
the Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery about mid-way through the week.

That strike was
powerful enough to close the refinery down, which takes yet more barrels that Russia could
export out of the picture.

As for Yaroslavl, you can probably guess what we’re about to tell you –
it was also hit.

March 28 brought with it the news that this refinery was also in flames following
a Ukrainian drone strike.

Dot upon dot has been connected.

While Ust-Luga and Primorsk have been
grabbing all of the headlines, and rightfully so, the specter behind those obvious problems for
Russia is that Ukraine has been taking out the entire Siberian oil supply chain.

Bit by bit, it
has crumbled.

This was coordinated and calculated to an extent that we haven’t seen from Ukraine
at any point during the Ukraine war.

The days of isolated strikes against Russia’s oil facilities
are over.

Ukraine has upgraded its strategy again.

Repeated strikes against key nodes in entire
supply chains are now the order of the deep strike day, and that’s the big problem for Putin.

He’s losing critical assets that prop up Russia’s economy at a time when that economy is stagnating,
and even pro-Kremlin experts are saying that it is being brought to its knees.

The Central Bank of
Russia, the Higher School of Economics, and the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term
Forecasting are all putting out indicators that the Russian economy has been entering a recession
since November 2025, and it’s only going to go downhill from here.

Ukraine has Russia on the
ropes.

The challenge now is to keep it there.

The week from hell should be the combination of
jabs that is followed by haymakers, uppercuts, and everything else that Ukraine can throw at Russia.

In other words, Ukraine’s task now is to keep the Siberian supply chain offline.

Temporary closures
are one thing, and they showcase the effectiveness of Ukraine’s flying sanctions.

But if Ukraine
keeps it up, Operation Epic Fury will end, Russia’s infrastructure won’t be able to recover,
and the billions that Russia is already losing to Ukraine’s strikes will become tens of billions
that could be enough to pressure Putin into ending his invasion.

And as Russia is trying to lick
wounds that Ukraine seems intent on reopening following the week of hell, Ukraine is going from
strength to strength.

Deals are being signed in the Middle East that could secure Ukraine’s
financial and war-fighting future for a long time to come, and it’s all happening because of
the lessons that Ukraine has learned in its battle against Russia.

Do you want to find out more?
Check out our video on how the Iran war is making Ukraine a key player in the Middle East.

And if
you enjoyed this video, remember to subscribe to The Military Show to see more of our analysis of
Ukraine’s deep strike campaign against Russia.