Overwhelmed, lack of resources… In Russia, anti-aircraft defense is struggling to defend oil sites attacked by Ukraine

In Russia, while the Russian army launches raids on kyiv, night after night, Ukraine responds by targeting the Russian oil sector in particular. Increasingly precise strikes on refineries and maritime terminals which pass through Russian anti-aircraft defenses, which prove poorly adapted to this threat.

Latest example: at the end of May, Alexandre Chokhin, the president of the equivalent of Medef in Russia, was in Vladimir Putin’s office. He asked not for money, but for weapons of larger caliber than those already available to the companies regularly targeted by Ukrainian drones. First and foremost, refineries.

The anti-aircraft defense of these industrial sites, scattered across the four corners of Russia, has in fact become a major problem: it has already been delegated to the companies which finance it themselves.

If the Kremlin has authorized the creation of reserve units or that private security agents can carry weapons, this is not enough. Resources are lacking, and sites continue to be hit every night. According to the Reuters news agency, a quarter of Russian refining capacity is currently out of service, not counting the seriously damaged oil ports.

The Russian military industry is therefore developing new weapons. The Rostec conglomerate, the Russian arms giant, has just presented a new anti-aircraft system called ZAK-30 Citadel. Equipped with a 30 mm cannon, it is the equivalent of a German system used successfully in Ukraine against Russian drones. But it is not yet operational.