By Morrison Dave I SCN NEWS
MOSCOW — Petrol shortages are spreading deeper across Russia and reaching Moscow as repeated Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries disrupt domestic fuel supplies, bringing one of the most visible economic consequences of the war closer to Russians who for years were largely insulated from its direct impact.
Long queues, purchasing limits and shortages of particular grades of petrol have appeared across multiple Russian regions after months of Ukrainian attacks against refineries and fuel infrastructure. The disruption has become serious enough for regional authorities to introduce rationing, Moscow to redirect supplies from other parts of the country and Russia — one of the world's largest oil producers — to import gasoline from abroad.
The development creates an increasingly uncomfortable contradiction for the Kremlin. Russia remains one of the world's biggest crude-oil exporters and possesses a vast domestic refining industry, yet motorists in parts of the country are struggling to obtain the refined fuel needed to fill their cars. Ukrainian attacks have increasingly focused not on Russia's ability to extract crude from the ground but on the refineries, storage facilities and logistics network required to turn it into usable products and deliver them across the world's largest country.
Reuters reported in June that motorists across nearly all of Russia were facing some form of fuel-purchasing restriction, with particularly severe problems in southern Russia, Siberia and Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine. More significantly, shortages had begun appearing in Moscow, which had previously avoided many of the most disruptive effects.
The pressure has continued into August. Russia's Orenburg region introduced fuel rationing after a Ukrainian attack damaged the Orsk refinery, while Reuters reported the facility could remain shut for months. Russian authorities have acknowledged that supplies remain strained in several regions and have ordered oil companies to increase deliveries to the most vulnerable areas.
Evidence of the shortage in the capital has also become more concrete. Russian reporting examined by analysts this week found varying shortages at 21 filling stations in Moscow and the surrounding region, with only seven of those stations surveyed selling AI-92 gasoline, six selling AI-95 and five selling AI-98. Gazprom Neft also acknowledged imposing gasoline quotas at some Moscow filling stations while saying it was working to increase supplies.
The Kremlin has responded by trying to move fuel toward politically and economically important population centres. Reuters reported last month that authorities were rerouting supplies from Siberia toward Moscow and increasing imports from Belarus in an attempt to prevent shortages from worsening in the capital. Russia has also taken the extraordinary step of buying seaborne gasoline from India to supplement domestic supplies.
That does not mean Russia is running out of oil. The distinction is important. The country continues to produce enormous quantities of crude, but Ukrainian attacks can temporarily remove refining capacity, creating regional shortages of gasoline and other finished products even while crude production continues.
Kyiv openly describes the campaign as an attempt to impose economic costs on Moscow and weaken the infrastructure supporting Russia's military. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called Ukraine's long-range attacks “sanctions”, arguing that strikes inside Russia can accomplish what conventional economic pressure has not by physically disrupting facilities that generate revenue and fuel the war effort.
Russia says Ukrainian attacks on its territory amount to terrorism and has intensified its own strikes against Ukrainian cities, energy facilities and other infrastructure. Moscow has also sought to expand air defences around critical industrial sites as Ukrainian drones demonstrate increasing range and sophistication.
President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in June that Russia was experiencing a fuel deficit but described the difficulties as temporary and said the government would increase imports, accelerate repairs and expand air-defence production. Russian authorities have continued to insist that the country's overall energy system remains capable of meeting its needs.
The shortage has nevertheless begun producing secondary problems. Russian business reporting indicates disruption is spreading beyond petrol into products such as motor oil as refineries redirect inputs toward gasoline production. Analysts say efforts to solve one shortage can therefore create pressure elsewhere in the petrochemical supply chain.
Yet the political impact is more difficult to measure than the physical shortage. The appearance of queues at filling stations does not establish that Russian public support for the war is collapsing, and available evidence does not justify making that claim. The BBC's Steve Rosenberg found frustration over petrol shortages while also encountering Russians who continued expressing patriotic support for the country and its military campaign.
That distinction matters. Ukraine has increasingly succeeded in making the economic consequences of the conflict more visible inside Russia, but economic inconvenience and political opposition are not the same thing. A motorist angry about finding petrol can simultaneously continue supporting the Kremlin or view Ukraine rather than Moscow as responsible for the disruption.
The strategic significance of the fuel campaign therefore lies somewhere else. For much of the war, the Kremlin's ability to keep ordinary life relatively normal in Moscow and other major cities helped create distance between Russia's battlefield operations and the daily experience of millions of civilians. Fuel shortages penetrating the capital make maintaining that separation increasingly difficult.
Ukraine does not need to deprive the entire country of petrol for the campaign to have an effect. Every refinery forced offline requires repairs, alternative supplies or redistribution from another region. Every tanker redirected toward Moscow potentially reduces availability elsewhere, while importing gasoline into one of the world's largest petroleum-producing countries carries economic as well as symbolic costs.
The clearest evidence of pressure is therefore not whether Russians have suddenly lost their patriotism. There is no reliable basis for saying they have.
It is that Moscow is now importing gasoline from India, drawing additional supplies from Belarus and rerouting fuel from Siberia while some filling stations in the Russian capital impose limits or lack particular grades of petrol.
Ukraine's refinery campaign has not stopped Russia's war. What it has increasingly done is make one part of its cost harder to keep outside the everyday lives of Russians.
SCN MOST VERIFIED & UNIQUE FACT
Russia, one of the world's largest oil producers, began importing seaborne gasoline from India in response to domestic shortages while simultaneously rerouting Siberian fuel toward Moscow and increasing supplies from Belarus.
That is the strongest verified SCN angle: Ukraine has not deprived Russia of crude oil; it is disrupting the refining and distribution system badly enough that Moscow is importing finished petrol and reshuffling domestic supplies to protect its capital.