emerging

Ukraine used its latest technology to deepen strikes against Russian oil storage, ports and refineries in the past week, bombing targets in the Urals 1,600 kilometres (990 miles) from its borders and prompting protests about “terrorist attacks” from the Kremlin spokesman.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday announced “a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia’s war”.

The Ukraine Security Service (SBU) later clarified it had struck Transneft’s oil pumping and distribution facility in the city of Perm that day, from where oil was pumped to the Perm refinery and via pipeline in four directions across Russia.

The facility is “a strategically important hub of the main oil transportation system”, said the SBU, and preliminary information suggested that “almost all oil storage tanks are on fire”.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed the strike and said it had downed 98 Ukrainian UAVs across various regions.

“The Urals are now within reach, be vigilant,” wrote Russia’s presidential envoy to the region, Artem Zhoga.

Ukraine’s campaign has begun to elicit reactions from the Russian government.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attacks on oil facilities “terrorist attacks”.

A Russian Defence Ministry announcement – that military cadets and a column of equipment would not take part in this year’s Victory Day parade commemorating the end of World War II “due to the current operational situation” – was also widely interpreted as a precaution against potential Ukrainian drone strikes.

Ukraine’s strikes are part of a strategy of depriving Russia of windfall profits from soaring oil prices due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Zelenskyy said Russian internal documents seen by his foreign intelligence service admitted that Ukraine had deprived oil offloading ports of much of their capacity.

Primorsk and Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea had lost 13 percent and 43 percent of capacity, respectively, and the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk 38 percent.

“We believe that such internal Russian data may be underestimated,” Zelenskyy said.

The internal figures roughly agree with a Reuters March estimate that Russia had lost approximately 40 percent of its export capacity.

That translated into revenue losses of $2.3bn in March, Zelenskyy estimated.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that Ukraine had likely conducted at least 18 strikes against Russian oil infrastructure in April.

Kyiv’s attacks have been “steadily increasing the range, volume, and intensity” with “outsized impacts on Russian oil exports”.

Ukraine struck other oil and military targets during the past week.

On April 23, it damaged three storage tanks at the Gorky oil pumping station in Nizhny Novgorod and struck the Novokuibyshevsk petrochemical plant in Samara.

The next day, it destroyed two production facilities at the Atlant-Aero factory in Taganrog, Rostov, which builds the Molniya drones used to attack Ukrainian cities.

On Sunday, Ukraine struck the Yaroslavl oil refinery, and on Tuesday, they struck the Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea for the third time this month. Even before this latest strike, at least 24 oil storage tanks at the site had been destroyed, said Ukraine’s head of the Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko.

Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched his Civil Defence, Emergencies, and Disaster Relief minister, Alexander Kurenkov, to oversee the response personally.

An emerging air power

Ukraine has been developing its own long-range strike capabilities and devotes 20 percent of its defence resources to new technologies, said Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

One of its leading drone manufacturers, Wild Hornets, recently said a drone operator had used its remote piloting system to fly a Sting interceptor drone at a distance of 2,000km (1,240 miles).

On April 23, Fedorov said Ukraine had successfully tested remote control technology that enabled pilots to operate from the relative safety of Kyiv or Lviv, “at distances of hundreds and thousands of kilometres”.

Ukraine is now touting its battlefield innovations in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the wake of Iran’s attack on the Gulf nations.

Zelenskyy met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh on April 24 to discuss “the export of our Ukrainian security expertise and capabilities in air defence”.

Days later, he said Kyiv produces as many as twice the number of certain types of weapons as the military needed, and that “Ukrainian companies will get a real opportunity to enter the markets of partner countries, provided that our military have the right to take the necessary amount of weapons first”.

The burgeoning relationship with the Gulf, he said, had invoked Moscow’s concern.

“Russia is particularly irritated by our contacts in the Middle East and the Gulf region,” he told Ukrainians on Wednesday.

More surprisingly, he said some allies, too, were irritated by the competition.

“We are also aware of the complex attitude of some of our other partners towards this – partners who would prefer to limit our state’s independence,” Zelenskyy said in an evening video address. “We consider this their mistake.

As emerging markets head toward their weakest month in years, some asset managers are moving in the opposite direction and adding to positions.

Firms including TT International and AllianceBernstein are buying beaten-down bonds and currencies, betting that central banks will shift

US President Trump, who cut off oil supplies to Cuba after abducting Venezuela’s President Maduro, has threatened to take over the island-nation.

The Cuban government has said it is prepared for any potential United States attacks as the island-nation begins to recover from yet another blackout under a punishing oil blockade imposed by Washington that has pushed its economy to the brink.

Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio responded on Sunday to US President Donald Trump’s threats this week to take over Cuba, insisting that it had “historically been ready to mobilise as a nation for military aggression”.

“We don’t believe it is something that is probable, but we would be naive if we do not prepare,” de Cossio told NBC’s Meet the Press.

His comments were aired a day after the latest collapse of the country’s ageing nationwide grid that had left millions of people in the dark. Saturday’s outage was the second in the past week and the third in March.

The state-run Electric Union and the Ministry of Energy and Mines said some 72,000 customers in the capital, Havana, including five hospitals, had electricity again early on Sunday. But the number represented only a fraction of Havana’s total population of approximately two million.

The Cuban Electric Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said the total disconnection of the national system was caused by an unexpected shutdown of a generation unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camaguey province, without providing details on the specific cause of the failure.

Trump, who started blocking oil from reaching the island after abducting Cuba’s ally, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, early this year, has warned potential oil exporters that they could face high tariffs.

According to President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. The country produces barely 40 percent of the fuel it needs to power its economy.

On March 16, Trump escalated his rhetoric against Cuba, arguing the leadership was on the verge of collapse and saying he expected to have the “honour” of taking the country.

De Cossio denied that the nature, structure, or makeup of the Cuban government was up for negotiation in what Havana has called a “serious and responsible” dialogue with Washington launched earlier this month. He added that a change of the ruling system was “absolutely” off the table in discussions.

This week, General Francis Donovan, head of the US Southern Command overseeing armed forces in Latin America, told lawmakers at a US Senate hearing on Trump’s military action in the region that troops were not rehearsing for an invasion of Cuba or actively preparing to take over the Communist-run island.

But, he added, the US stood ready to address any threats to the US embassy, to defend its base at Guantanamo Bay, and aid US government efforts to address any mass migration from the island, if needed.

The Cuban government reportedly refused a request by the embassy in Havana to allow it to import diesel for its generators in response to the oil blockade, The Associated Press reported on Saturday, citing two US officials.