Ust-Luga

Ukraine's October claim put Ust-Luga back at the centre of its energy campaign. On 4 October Kyiv said its drones had disabled 51% of Russian oil refining, and Khmara listed Ust-Luga among the sites behind the figure; drones then hit refineries at Omsk and Ukhta.

Checking that claim at the port has become harder. Vladimir Putin's Decree 686 of 28 September restricts public data on refinery output, export prices, buyers, tanker details and loading times. For a terminal whose loadings outsiders have tracked month by month since the March strikes, that removes the official half of the comparison and leaves ship-tracking as the only check on what Ust-Luga ships.

Ust-Luga's worst weeks came at the end of March. Ukrainian drones struck it and Primorsk, Russia's two largest Baltic oil export terminals, at least four times between 22 and 31 March, and weekly Russian seaborne crude exports fell from 4.07 million to 2.32 million barrels a day, a 43% drop.

Satellite imagery from 1 April showed Ust-Luga's crude terminal physically intact while its fuel and product terminals bore fire traces. That split shaped the aftermath: crude loading resumed on 5 April, while the loss of product exports fed Russia's petrol export ban from 1 April.

The port came back quickly as a crude outlet. In May Ust-Luga loadings recovered 49% as the shadow fleet kept rerouting, which let Russia's total fossil-fuel revenue rise 2% even as Urals crude fell 12% and China cut purchases.

Since June, Britain has boarded tankers loaded at Ust-Luga as well as listing them. On 14 June Royal Marines boarded the Smyrtos in the English Channel, nine days after it left Ust-Luga, and Britain's National Crime Agency arrested one person for suspected sanctions offences. It was Britain's first physical boarding of a Russian shadow tanker after years of designating ships on paper.