Russia's seaborne exports of refined oil products rose to a three-month high in September, but the growth came from cheaper fuel oil and naphtha as diesel shipments fell to their lowest in more than a decade, Bloomberg reported, citing Vortexa data. Russia kept diesel at home after Ukrainian refinery strikes and paid oil companies to supply its pumps, while high crude prices lifted its crude export earnings.

During the ongoing deep-strike campaign, Ukraine's long-range drones have knocked out more than half of Russia's oil refining capacity, Kyiv says, and Russia's budget oil revenues are falling even as it raises war spending. High global crude prices are softening that blow.

Cheaper fuel out

Total seaborne product exports reached about 1.17 million barrels a day in September. Fuel oil shipments rose 6% to about 613,000 barrels a day, the highest since April. Naphtha, a feedstock for petrochemicals, jumped 35% to 363,000 barrels a day. Exports of refinery feedstocks, including vacuum gasoil, rose to about 32,000 barrels a day, according to Bloomberg.

The trade has moved north. Almost 80% of fuel oil cargoes left from Baltic ports, and naphtha loadings there rose almost 50% as Ukrainian attacks disrupted Black Sea infrastructure. In September, Ukraine reported hitting an oil terminal in Novorossiysk, Russia's main Black Sea oil port—one in a string of attacks on Russia's Black Sea ports and oil sites.

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Diesel kept at home

Diesel and gasoil exports fell 28% to 144,000 barrels a day, the lowest monthly volume in Vortexa data going back more than a decade. Russia has restricted diesel exports to protect domestic supply after Ukrainian attacks on its refineries. Drones kept hitting them into October, from a Lukoil refinery in Volgograd to Gazprom's Salavat complex in Bashkortostan.

In September, Russia paid oil companies the biggest subsidy in more than four years to keep road fuel on the domestic market. It also imported about 350,000 tonnes of motor fuel by sea, mostly gasoline from India, Morocco, and Türkiye, Reuters calculations showed. Officials are considering letting some producers resume diesel exports in October to avoid overstocking, according to Interfax.

The diesel squeeze has reached the White House. US President Donald Trump stated on 30 September that diesel was hurt "not by the Middle East, but by what's going on in Russia, because those diesel refineries are being knocked out at a pretty alarming rate."

Crude carries the revenue

Russia's crude exports reached about 3.99 million barrels a day in the week to 27 September, and the estimated value of its seaborne crude shipments neared its highest since the full-scale invasion began, Bloomberg reported. Brent crude traded at about $102.60 a barrel on 9 October, according to Trading Economics data.

Operation MoLoChKa has now disabled 300 Russian shadow fleet ships in 11 weeks, SBS commander Robert "Madyar" Brovdi announced. The Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) campaign has frozen the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait, Brovdi said.

134 in the Azov, 166 in the Black Sea

SBS drones struck 134 vessels in the Azov Sea and 166 in the Black Sea since Operation MoLoChKa began on 6 July, the SBS wrote—all, Brovdi specified, stripped of the ability to move under their own power. He called it the "300th fleet," playing on the Ukrainian army's code for a wounded man, and "a suitcase without a handle and a torment for the worm budget."

The Azov Sea "stands and will stand, together with the Kerch Strait," Brovdi said. The northern and northeastern Black Sea operates on what he called a "maybe we'll slip through" gamble.

The 300-ship count is the latest in a rapid progression. The SBS reported 201 vessels disabled by 29 July—just three weeks into the operation—when Brovdi said Crimea's supply route was "blocked indefinitely." By 11 September, the tally had reached 285, with 215 struck in July, 54 in August, and 16 in the first 11 days of September. The pace slowed as traffic in the strike zone thinned out.

The SBS figures are the unit's own and cannot be independently verified.

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Commercial shipping retreating from Russian ports

In late August, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., the world's largest container carrier, suspended new bookings for transport through the Russian port of Novorossiysk. Russia itself closed the Don-Azov shipping channel and the Kerch Strait in July after the opening wave of strikes.

By early August, Ukraine had turned Novorossiysk—Russia's main Black Sea export gateway—into a chokepoint, and in mid-August Ukrainian forces struck four Russian warships there in a single night. A 141-meter vessel disappeared near Novorossiysk the same week.

A parallel campaign against Crimea's power grid

The SBS is running a second operation alongside MoLoChKa. Operation Crimean Switch Off, also launched on 6 July, had struck 374 energy nodes across occupied Crimea and other occupied areas in eastern and southern Ukraine by 10 September. The campaign has blacked out Crimea on multiple nights. Brovdi has said the SBS could strike seven times more targets with faster funding.