MOSCOW, July 7 — The shift is subtle but unmistakable in Russia’s energy command structure. Alexander Novak, the Deputy Prime Minister for Energy, is no longer just a bureaucrat managing pipelines and production quotas. He has become the Kremlin’s frontline crisis manager for a war being fought on two fronts: one in Ukrainian territory, the other inside Russia’s own refinery network.
Novak, born August 23, 1971, in Avdiivka, Ukraine — then part of the Soviet Union — has held the deputy prime minister portfolio since November 2020. Before that, he served as Russia’s Minister of Energy from 2012 to 2020.
His career trajectory tracks directly with Moscow’s aggressive pivot toward energy as a geopolitical weapon. But the job description has changed. Novak now oversees protection of critical energy infrastructure, a phrase that in 2026 means something very different than it did in 2021.
The Omsk Strike and the New Normal
The moment that crystallized this shift came on August 26, 2024. A drone strike hit the Omsk refinery, one of Russia’s largest processing facilities. Novak was directly involved in coordinating the response and assessing the damage.
Watch this space: that single event reshaped how the Kremlin thinks about its energy assets. Refineries that once operated as purely commercial enterprises are now military targets, and Novak is the man tasked with holding the system together.
He has been under Western sanctions since 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea. That long isolation means Novak operates in a parallel financial and logistical universe, one where replacement parts for Western-made refinery equipment are sourced through third countries and insurance costs are effectively state-subsidized. The sanctions haven’t removed him from power.
They’ve made him more central to it. What’s changing is the tempo of the threat.
The Omsk strike was not an isolated incident. It fits into a broader pattern of Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure that have forced Moscow to rethink its defensive posture. Novak’s public statements have been blunt.
He has stated that Russia will retaliate against Ukrainian energy infrastructure in response to such strikes. That is not diplomatic language. It is the language of a war economy.
The OPEC+ Tightrope
Novak’s other major portfolio is the management of Russia’s relationship with OPEC+. He has been a key figure in negotiations to manage oil production levels, a delicate balancing act that requires keeping global prices high enough to fund the war effort without triggering a demand collapse or losing market share to U.S. shale producers. The trend underneath is that Novak is simultaneously running a wartime energy policy and a peacetime commodity strategy.
Those two realities are increasingly incompatible. Every drone strike on a Russian refinery reduces processing capacity, which squeezes export volumes, which complicates OPEC+ commitments.
Novak has to explain to his counterparts in Riyadh why Russia cannot always hit its production targets, without revealing just how much damage Ukrainian drones are inflicting. He is also the point man for protecting Russia’s oil and gas industry broadly, a mandate that covers everything from pipeline security to cyber defense. The job now includes coordinating with the military, intelligence services, and regional governors who have refineries in their territories.
It is a sprawling, crisis-prone portfolio that would test any administrator.
Avdiivka to the Kremlin
There is a biographical irony here that Novak’s handlers likely prefer not to discuss. He was born in Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that has seen some of the war’s heaviest fighting. Avdiivka was under Ukrainian control for years before falling to Russian forces in early 2024.
The man responsible for protecting Russia’s energy infrastructure from Ukrainian drones was born in a city that Russia later bombed into rubble and then captured. That background gives Novak a personal understanding of the war’s geography that few other senior Russian officials possess.
It also makes him a target for Ukrainian propagandists, who have noted the irony. But in Moscow’s system, loyalty is measured in actions, not origins. Novak has been sanctioned by the West since 2014 and has never wavered in his public support for the Kremlin’s energy strategy.
His rise from energy minister to deputy prime minister in November 2020 was a promotion that reflected the growing importance of the energy sector to Russia’s overall state strategy. The war accelerated that trend.
Novak is now one of the most powerful economic officials in the Russian government, with direct access to President Vladimir Putin and a portfolio that touches nearly every aspect of the war effort.
What to Watch Next
The question going forward is whether Novak can keep the system running. Russian refineries are aging, Western technology is largely unavailable, and the drone threat is not going away. Novak has stated publicly that Russia will retaliate against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, but retaliation does not solve the underlying vulnerability.
Every refinery that gets hit is a refinery that takes months to repair, assuming the parts and expertise can be found. Watch this space for two things.
First, whether Novak shifts more refinery capacity underground or into dispersed, smaller facilities that are harder to target. Second, whether the OPEC+ relationship starts to fray as Russia’s export capacity declines. Novak is the man in the middle of both trends.
The war has made him indispensable. It has also made his job nearly impossible.
