October 13th, 2026: Ukraine Cripples Russian Oil Refineries & Britain Targets IRGC Operatives

Mike Baker (0:12)

It's Tuesday, the 13th of October. Welcome to The President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears are on the world stage. Alright, let's get briefed. First up, Ukraine's attacks on Russia's oil industry are inflicting serious damage. And new reporting reveals just how effective the campaign has become, even as President Trump pressures Kiev to stop. Later in the show, Britain says Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, are likely behind a suspected plot targeting an airbase housing American bombers, raising new concerns about the regime's covert operations on NATO soil. Plus, Western intelligence agencies warn that Russia is plotting assassinations against European defense industry executives, targeting the people responsible for producing weapons for Ukraine. And in today's Back of the Brief, Colombia's decades-old guerrilla conflict is heating up again, with rebels launching a car bomb attack, just as fighting intensifies between insurgents and government forces. And here I thought we didn't have enough conflict zones in 2026

But first, today's PDB Spotlight. We've been reporting on the growing tension between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, particularly over Kyiv's ongoing attacks against Russia's oil refineries.

Now, President Trump is obviously very keen for those strikes to stop. He's blamed them for rising fuel prices in the US as the midterm elections approach, although there is the chance that the Middle East conflict has something to do with rising fuel prices. Now, his administration is reportedly threatening to restrict American weapon sales to Ukraine, unless Zelensky backs down. But there's a reason Ukraine has been so reluctant to abandon these attacks. I mean, besides wanting to defend their country and citizens, new reporting suggests that it's the same reason that Washington is so determined to stop them. Simply put, Ukraine's campaign against Russia's oil industry is working. A new investigation by the Washington Post reveals just how systematically Ukrainian forces have been dismantling critical parts of Russia's refining infrastructure. And over the weekend, another suspected Ukrainian drone strike left a major Russian oil tournament in flames, with the facility still burning some three days later. That latest attack occurred in Russia's Rostov region, where a petroleum storage and shipping terminal associated with the Novoshekhtinsk refinery was reportedly struck overnight on Friday into Saturday. By Monday, the facility was still burning. According to the Moscow Times, Ukrainian monitoring channels reported that seven of the terminal's 12 storage tanks had caught fire, with another showing signs of damage. Those figures have not been independently confirmed, but satellite fire detection systems verified a major blaze at the location. The terminal can store roughly 60,000 cubic meters of petroleum products and handle approximately 3.5 million metric tons annually. It's part of the infrastructure that Russia uses to move refined petroleum products to domestic customers and export markets. But the Rostov attack is just the latest example of a much larger operation. The Washington Post examined 54 Ukrainian strikes against Russian oil refineries and found that Kyiv has developed an increasingly sophisticated strategy for disabling those facilities. Rather than simply trying to blow up an entire refinery, Ukrainian drones are targeting specific pieces of equipment essential to the refining process. That includes distillation units and other specialized machinery used to turn crude oil into gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products. And what makes that strategy especially effective is that some of those components are enormously expensive, technically complicated and difficult to manufacture. And since Russia also faces Western sanctions restricting its access to foreign equipment and parts, these components are not easy to replace. So a relatively inexpensive Ukrainian drone can damage machinery that takes months to repair or replace. And while a refinery might look largely intact from the outside, the destruction of one critical processing unit can force substantial portions of the facility to shut down. According to data cited by the Post, Ukraine struck roughly two-thirds of Russia's 30-plus major refineries between April and August. By late August, approximately half of the country's refining capacity was offline. Some facilities were undergoing repairs, and others could eventually resume operations. But it demonstrates the extraordinary scale of the disruption.

And Ukraine has been getting better at penetrating Russia's defenses. The Post describes increasingly complex drone operations involving decoys, larger waves of aircraft, and intelligence used to identify vulnerable points in Russia's air defense network. For Moscow, that presents an enormous challenge. Refineries are sprawling industrial facilities scattered across a vast country. Russia cannot place its most sophisticated air defense systems around every refinery and fuel depot, pipeline, and shipping terminal. And the consequences are becoming difficult to ignore. Russia has experienced fuel shortages, rising gasoline prices, and disruptions to refined product exports. President Putin acknowledged earlier this month that the refinery tax had cost Russia approximately 1% of its GDP. That's according to his government's estimates. That's a remarkable admission from a country whose enormous oil and gas reserves have long been among its greatest economic strengths.