Konstantin can smell the consequences of the war in Ukraine from his apartment in St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin’s hometown.Over the past two weeks, the asthmatic 53-year-old, whose full name has been withheld for fear of repercussions, has been sporadically aware of the odour of burning crude, fuel and other chemicals ignited by Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s two largest oil terminals on the Baltic, which handle two-fifths of Moscow’s seaborne oil exports and almost 2 percent of global oil supply, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).The attacks are part of Kyiv’s wider effort to hit more than a dozen oil refineries deep in Russia and, ultimately, to reduce Moscow’s unexpected windfall income from oil exports after Washington and Tel Aviv began bombarding Iran at the end of February.The terminals at Ust-Luga and Primorsk, which sit on opposite sides of the Gulf of Finland, 165km (102 miles) and 133km (82.6 miles) from St Petersburg, respectively, are a confluence of pipelines originating from oilfields along the Volga River, in the Ural Mountains and in western Siberia.In each attack on these facilities, swarms of long-range drones have flown more than 1,000km (621 miles) from the Ukrainian border to destroy oil storage tanks and shipping infrastructure, sparking sky-high fires that have lasted for days.Konstantin says the smell from the fires, which varies from that akin to diesel engine exhaust to burning plas …
