Russia is running out of fuel. Ukrainian drone strikes have hit every major refinery in the country. Gas stations across nearly all 83 federal regions are rationing, running dry, or closing. The war Moscow started has reached Russian drivers queuing for hours with empty tanks.
This is the story of how Ukraine’s “kinetic sanctions”, the systematic destruction of Russia’s fuel infrastructure, have created a crisis that touches every Russian who owns a car, drives a tractor, or needs heat. And how the Kremlin is managing the fallout without anyone blaming the war itself.
Every Refinery Hit
By early July, Ukraine had struck every one of Russia’s largest refineries. The last to fall was the sprawling Soviet-era plant in Omsk, 1,930 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the front. Repair timelines run from months to years, complicated by Western sanctions that block access to foreign parts.
Meduza’s data desk examined 118 days of trading records on the St. Petersburg commodity exchange, more than 65,000 individual transactions. Between January and June, national exchange volumes for gasoline and diesel fell 47 percent. Prices rose 46 percent.
Nearly every region has reported shortages, rationing, or restrictions. In agricultural areas the crisis threatens the harvest itself. A combine harvester burns 300 liters of diesel per shift. Gas stations now limit commercial vehicles to 100-200 liters.
Crimea is hit hardest. Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, told Putin in a public meeting that premium gasoline had reached 197 rubles per liter, more than double the national average and more than triple pre-war prices. Some reports put the figure at 450 rubles.
Putin acknowledged the lines but called the situation “not critical.” He described the strikes as a Ukrainian “information campaign” designed to sow self-doubt. The shortage, the Kremlin suggests, is a psychological problem to be resisted mentally, not a policy failure to be fixed by ending the war.
How Russians React
A man in Chita waited 39 hours in line for fuel. His conclusion was not that the war was a mistake, but that Russia was “too soft” on Ukraine and needed to “start acting seriously”, a common Russian euphemism for more ruthless attacks.
Anonymous interviews with panicked drivers show bewilderment. “Why is this happening to us? What did we do to deserve this?” is a typical response. Few connect the dots from the invasion of Ukraine to the empty gas station on their street.
Jade McGlynn, a researcher on Russian public opinion, told the Kyiv Independent that ordinary Russians’ anger about the fuel crisis was “corrosive” but not “explosive”, nothing that threatens the regime.
The numbers back that up. The state pollster WCIOM recorded Putin’s approval rating sliding for three straight weeks, from 70.4 percent in mid-June to 66.0 percent by July 5. A decline, but nothing like a collapse. The historical parallel is the US Strategic Bombing Survey of WWII Germany: even when Germans accepted bombing as the consequence of war, dissatisfaction had nowhere to go under Gestapo surveillance.
Digital-Era Coping
Russians are adapting. A crowdsourced anonymous map called GdeBenz (“where’s gas”) covers 20,000 stations. On Max, the state-enforced messenger service, users adopted code words, gasoline is “gold,” regular is “platinum,” fuel is “water.” Yandex formalized fuel-and-queue data for Moscow and St. Petersburg.
It looks like grassroots solidarity, drivers helping drivers. But it works as a release valve. Users treat the shortage as a logistical problem solvable with better information, not a policy failure requiring accountability.
The state reinforces this. The governor of Lipetsk first blamed panic-buying, then blamed oil companies. Russia’s competition ministry opened cases against six independent gas station operators for raising prices “simultaneously.” The message: the problem is greedy businessmen, not the war.
A new law permits blending lower-grade Euro-3 gasoline, which contains 15 times more sulfur and damages modern engines, with Euro-5 to stretch supplies. There are rumors that the government may invoke a state of emergency nationwide or postpone September’s State Duma elections.
The question is how long this holds. Drivers waiting hours for fuel know something is wrong. Eventually they may start asking the obvious question: if Russia is winning, why can’t anyone fill their tank?
Source: Foreign Policy (Alexey Kovalev)