It's relevant to note Ukraine has a single-digit number of refineries because they're small (and were more an oil transit-point from Russia to Europe than a domestic refiner themselves).
That said, Russia droned what wikipedia claims to be the largest refinery in the country in September of last year (and the article notes had attempted strikes before as well).
The wiki-claimed second-largest refinery in the country was attacked in April of the previous year directly in the aftermath of the hostilities starting (captured later in the year).
Serhiy Haidai said that a fire broke out in an area of 5,000 square meters following the morning attack, and workers are still extinguishing the flame. Shelling still continues in residential areas of Lysychansk and locals are asked to remain in shelters, the official added.
kyivindependent.com
Russian invaders have fired on the Lysychansk oil refinery, remaining oil sludge is still burning. — Ukrinform.
www.ukrinform.net
Also in April two years ago there were Russian strikes on (wiki-claimed fourth-largest) oil refinery and storage in Odessa.
So, even restricting the conversation entirely to oil (which isn't exactly an equal comparison since a lot of Ukraine's fuel is coal or nuclear and both have also been recipients of Russian missiles or drones), targeting oil refineries is nothing new. Ukraine is by no means breaking new ground on that front.
It is also worth note that Ukrainian strikes have, to-date, struck refineries and such more consistently than Russian strikes which have overlapped, by either failed targeting or intention we can't for-certain say which, into strikes on apartment buildings and other much more explicitly fully-civilian structures. Part of that is probably a function of Ukraine having less capability in general for these strikes so lower sample-size, and part of it is probably western aid allowing better targeting on their part than Russia...And they're probably incentivized to avoid bad PR for them while Russia has much less of a problem with that.
And intentional strikes on civilian buildings to encourage surrender would not be unheard of from Russia and, particularly, Putin, since it was practiced in Grozny.
*BIG BREATH*
AND to drag this back to some semblance of the thread's topic, that's why the Biden administration's messaging/handling of the issue is bonkers and something he absolutely deserves to take political heat on. Trying to arm-jaggle Ukraine not to actually fight the war we encouraged them towards and have expressed support for is some grade-A silliness. Bad enough when political bullshittery from the 'Best and Brightest' got injected into America's Vietnam war by those folks and got America's ass thrown out, now we're trying to vicariously sabotage our patsies/puppets/allies/clients war efforts on the same political bullshit-basis (and it's not even a very good political bullshit-basis...Putin may be many things, including much more inured to civilian deaths than the West is--which also probly goes for Ukraine in general as well--but he's not an irrational actor by all we can tell, merely a very, very Russian one with a completely different realm of interests and historiography, even).
Anyhow, The State Department is full of imbeciles who are convinced they're intelligent.
