Russian crude shipments through the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline resumed on 28 August after an almost week-long halt triggered by a Ukrainian drone strike on the Unecha pumping station, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said. Oil firm MOL confirmed flows to Hungary and Slovakia have restarted in test mode at below-normal volumes. The interruption, which began on 21 August, had forced the two land-locked countries—both still heavily reliant on Russian crude—to draw on commercial inventories. Budapest warned that a prolonged outage could have required tapping strategic reserves and increasing seaborne imports via Croatia. The attack is part of a wider series of strikes that have sharply curtailed Russia’s downstream operations. Reuters calculations put idle primary refining capacity at a record 6.4 million tonnes in August, 65 percent higher than previous estimates, with drone damage knocking out roughly 17 percent, or 1.2 million barrels a day, of throughput. Infrastructure constraints are spreading to export hubs. Sources said Russia’s Baltic port of Ust-Luga will operate at about half capacity in September because of pipeline damage, with some cargoes diverted to Primorsk and Novorossiisk as Moscow seeks to sustain overseas oil sales.