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Sanctions, Drones, and Fuel Shortages: Economic Coercion as a Tool in the Russia-Ukraine War

Western sanctions and Ukrainian drone strikes have measurably degraded Russia's refining capacity — now at 21-year lows — and cut export revenues, but Russia has offset much of this through shadow tankers, deep discounts to India and China, and domestic rationing, producing the core tension of the briefing: economic damage is real and documented, yet has not translated into strategic concession. The central dispute is whether this represents the "sanctions paradox" — where authoritarian regimes absorb pain without changing behavior — or cumulative cost-imposition that is slowly eroding Russia's long-term war-financing capacity, a question the evidence cannot yet resolve. A critical gap the briefing flags but cannot fill is who inside Russia actually bears the fuel shortages: whether costs fall on military logistics or on peripheral workers and low-income households has direct implications for assessing both the strategic effectiveness and the ethical weight of this form of coercion.

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