Rosneft’s classified document recommended smoke screens against GPS-guided drones — and the same document explains why that’s useless

Hackers obtained a confidential Rosneft presentation on protecting its refineries, oil depots, pump stations, and other facilities from Ukrainian drone strikes, Militarnyi reported. Intelligence firm Dallas Analytics published the 2026 document, which lays out eight physical barrier designs — each followed by the company's own list of why it fails.

Rosneft's active defenses can't reach Ukraine's drones

The presentation, titled "Systems of Protection Against Unauthorized Use of UAVs at Company Facilities," was jointly prepared by Rosneft, affiliated repair holding Rosgasifikatsiya, and scaffolding contractor OrgEnergoKapital, according to the document.

Its opening section states the core problem plainly: Rosneft's electronic warfare and fire-engagement weapons work only against remotely operated drones flying above 35 meters. Ukraine's long-range strike drones use pre-programmed GPS coordinates with no radio signal to jam. Every section that follows deals exclusively with passive physical barriers.

The document cites a recent example of that failure: anti-drone netting at a Pskovnefteprodukt depot in Velikiye Luki did not stop a Ukrainian strike in February 2026.

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Eight designs, eight acknowledged failures

The presentation proposes eight barrier configurations built from available materials: steel cable nets, modular scaffolding, stacked shipping containers, repurposed tower crane sections, and reinforced concrete panels. Rosneft's own engineers wrote the flaw list for each.

The cable-net wrap around storage tanks is "not resistant to drone shrapnel." The scaffolding design suffers from "insufficient volume of scaffolding to protect company facilities" and "high solution costs." Container walls reaching up to 36 meters require "thousands" of containers per refinery and remain untested at an industrial scale. The three-layer column-apparatus protection system states: "In the event of detonation, destruction is inevitable."

The document's general physical-protection overview, highlighted in red by the authors, reads: 

"Physical protection is a set of structural measures that do not guarantee the safety of protected facilities. The solutions do not exclude explosive loads and shrapnel impact."

The permit-avoidance logic that makes the walls fall

A pattern runs through every barrier design: Rosneft deliberately avoided classifying any structure as permanent construction, because permanent structures trigger months of mandatory state review and building permits. Engineers specified shallow surface foundations, guy-wire anchoring, and unbolted container stacks instead.

The document names the consequence directly. Structures without rigid anchoring are vulnerable to a two-strike sequence — a first drone damages or topples the support structure, a second hits the now-exposed asset. The stockpiled pipes Rosneft proposed as load-bearing fence columns are "difficult to weld" and "do not meet impact-resistance requirements for load-bearing structures," the presentation notes.

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Smoke, Kevlar, and less fuel in the tanks

Alongside physical barriers, the presentation recommends four organizational measures. It advises deploying smoke-generating devices on detecting an attack — though the same document explains Ukraine's GPS-guided drones need no visual guidance, and modern Ukrainian strike drones increasingly carry infrared cameras that see through smoke. It also recommends mobile shelters for on-site personnel, reducing stored petroleum volumes by rotating which tanks stay full, and wrapping critical pipeline junctions in Kevlar mats — immediately conceding that "no information on the effectiveness of armored fabrics is found in open sources."

Meanwhile, Putin officially arms private armies to protect infrastructure

On 23 March, Putin signed a law authorizing PMCs guarding Russian fuel and energy infrastructure to draw combat-grade small arms and ammunition from Rosgvardia. Under the law, each PMC files a request with Rosgvardia, and the FSB directorate for that region must then sign off, RIA Novosti reported.

Piskarev, who heads the State Duma's Security and Anti-Corruption Committee, stated that PMCs cover over 80% of Russia's fuel and energy infrastructure, but their existing weapons could not repel aerial, surface, underwater, or ground drone attacks. ISW assessed that the law partly responds to a longstanding grievance in Russian military blogging circles — repeated calls for better defenses at critical facilities — a pattern ISW had tracked across multiple prior assessments. 

A separate Kremlin measure from fall 2025 put active reservists through mandatory drills covering infrastructure defense — which ISW assessed as preparation for limited involuntary reserve callups.