Ukraine Brings Back the Drone Sanctions

About time!

Achilles. Elyte. Destan. Horae.

After loading up millions of barrels of discounted Russian crude, these four tankers—steamed toward Indian ports in Gujarat. Their destination was clear. Then, within hours of arrival, they were ordered to stop.

The Trump administration had just announced a new round of tariffs on Indian goods, citing what officials described as “imbalanced growth” in U.S.-India relations. But nobody in Washington believes this was really about trade.

If this was truly a rupture—if India were about to be forced to halt Russian oil imports entirely—then the global oil markets would have roiled immediately. Prices would have spiked. Risk premiums would have surged. Emergency briefings would have followed. But none of that happened. In fact, since July 30th, the markets have gently slid downward. Not only did they not react with panic—they moved in the exact opposite direction.

What gives?

Well, there are several layers to unpack, and we’ll take them one by one.

The first is supply. Global oil flows are far more resilient than many assume, especially in a market already flush with barrels. Despite the sudden stop of the four Russian-laden tankers, the market barely flinched because it knows there’s no acute scarcity.

There is enough spare capacity, enough idle stockpiles, and enough emergency levers to absorb temporary disruptions like this. By the time you read this, the number of barrels floating off India’s coast will likely have grown—possibly well beyond the initial 3 million. But none of them are being treated as lost. They are simply in holding patterns, waiting for clearance or new buyers.

Then came the second move—this time from the Gulf and the move I did not see it coming. Two days after the Trump administration made its announcement, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with its partners in the OPEC+ cartel, declared they would increase production by 547,000 barrels per day starting in September.

That wasn’t spontaneous. That was coordination.

Since May, OPEC+ has been gradually increasing output —but this latest move clearly had geopolitical timing written all over it. It was a signal to the markets: there will be no shortage, no matter what happens with India and Russia.

By the numbers, the cartel’s planned September output represents more than a 1.8 million barrels per day increase over May levels. That’s not trivial—it’s nearly two percent of total global daily supply. And within the cartel, Saudi Arabia has done most of the heavy lifting. Riyadh has taken its own production from 9.2 million barrels per day in May to just under 10 million now, quietly absorbing some of the shock caused by uncertainty in the Russia-India energy corridor.

Meanwhile, let’s be clear: Russian oil has not disappeared. It hasn’t been cut off or embargoed or physically eliminated from the market. It’s just… waiting. Those barrels—millions of them—are still sitting inside floating tankers, caught in the no man’s land between Indian customs and American leverage. That’s why the market stayed calm. It knows those barrels haven’t been lost—just delayed. And as long as they can be called into port eventually, they are still counted as part of the global balance.

In effect, the United States has managed to do two things at once: introduce friction into the India-Russia oil corridor, and stabilize the broader market by coordinating a production surge led by Saudi Arabia. That’s not just diplomacy—it’s power projection through pricing. By getting the Kingdom to lead the charge, and by quietly signaling to other Gulf producers to open their taps, the U.S. ensured that the oil market wouldn’t spiral into chaos. It even tapped into regional reserves as a short-term buffer, reinforcing the illusion of calm while moving its pieces on the board.

But what exactly does the Trump administration want?

That’s still murky. They cannot—and they know they cannot—fully replace Russia’s oil supply to India. The shipments will resume. The only question is when and how much. It’s possible the White House is aiming for a partial decoupling: perhaps trying to peel India away from Moscow by just 1 million barrels per day. Not enough to crater the Russian economy, but enough to signal that energy relationships come with consequences. Enough to create tension.

Or perhaps the goal is more tactical: to pressure India into squeezing better discounts out of Moscow. To remind the Russians that even their most loyal customers can be nudged. It’s hard to say with certainty, because this play is still in motion.

What we do know is that the administration is trying something. This isn’t symbolic. This isn’t reactive. It’s a live maneuver. And the target isn’t just oil—it’s the entire architecture of India’s foreign policy, which for years has tried to walk all sides of the global triangle without picking a side. Washington just laid a tripwire across that balancing act.

And while the diplomats talk and the tankers idle, Ukraine is not waiting. On August 2nd, after months of relative quiet, Ukrainian drones struck the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery in Samara, one of Russia’s key refining hubs operated by Rosneft. The very next day, another drone hit a fuel depot in Adler, in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea coast.

These aren’t random attacks. By mid-July, the Kremlin was already toying with the idea of a gasoline export ban, an admission that refined product prices were rising too fast to ignore. Official data claimed a 4% year-to-date spike in domestic fuel prices. But everyone knows what Russian “official data” means. The real number is likely far higher.

Ukraine and the United States are making the right moves.

But no one should be under any illusion—these moves won’t tip over the Russian economy overnight. Sanctions still need a long way to go before they can deliver a crippling blow. Drone strikes won’t fully tip the balance either.

But that doesn’t mean the pressure is pointless. You don’t bring down a fortress with one cannonball—you chip away at its foundation, over and over, until it collapses under its own weight. And that’s what this is about: relentless attrition.

Keep stressing the economy, keep burning through reserves, and keep hitting the parts of the machine that kill humans. Because like any predator, the Russian war engine doesn’t get full—it gets hungrier the more it feeds.

To stop it, you can’t just starve it. You have to attack its metabolism—its refineries, its logistics networks, its financial arteries. And at the same time, you need to empower those who are resisting it directly, every day, with fewer resources and higher stakes. That’s where NATO’s latest plan enters the picture.

The PURL Plan—short for Priority Ukraine Requirements List—is the most strategic shift in military aid architecture since the start of this war. Quietly assembled over the past few weeks, the plan creates a streamlined framework where Ukraine outlines exactly what it needs in discrete $500 million tranches. That list then becomes the shopping cart. NATO allies choose how to respond: either donate from their own stockpiles or place fresh orders from U.S. weapons manufacturers.

The end goal is a clean loop: Ukraine defines the need, Europe foots the bill, America delivers the firepower. The funds may flow through NATO trust accounts, directly through the U.S. Treasury, or even via bilateral transfers to the Pentagon. What matters is that they flow. The target is good—up to $10 billion in new weapons.

The PURL Plan turns support into logistics. It matches inventory with need. And it also gives donor countries a structured way to replenish their own arsenals, meaning they’re not depleting their own security to help Ukraine’s.

But here’s the caveat—the one part where the West keeps failing.

Operational secrecy.

For three years, we’ve watched military aid to Ukraine get turned into press releases, hashtags, and photo ops. Entire weapons packages were announced before they even crossed the border. Delivery details were published. Systems were discussed in open forums. And that gave Putin—and the ecosystem of western sabotage artists orbiting him—an enormous advantage.

This can’t happen again. If NATO is serious about the PURL Plan, then the first rule must be absolute silence. No breakdowns of which systems are included. No timelines. Shut it down. Full blackout. The more classified this process becomes, the more effective it will be. Because make no mistake—information leakage is not a bug of this war. It’s one of Russia’s weapons.

And those weapons are being amplified—not just in Moscow, but by bottom feeders on both fringes of the political spectrum. The far right, which openly admires Putin’s authoritarianism, and the far left, which cloaks its sabotage in "anti-war" rhetoric, are aligned in their support for Putin’s war machine.

One group parrots Kremlin talking points about NATO aggression. The other warns, in trembling tones, that Putin has nuclear weapons—so we must all stop and submit. Together, they form a perfect feedback loop of cowardice and confusion. They don’t care about human lives.

They care about audience reach, ad revenue, and retweets.

So, here’s my final recommendation. It’s not diplomatic. It’s not nuanced. It’s strategic.

Silence.

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