Fuel shortages that have been ramping up since the summer of 2025 are compounding into a nationwide crisis for Russia, forcing the oil-producing nation to ban energy sales and import instead.
In the annexed peninsula of Crimea, one of the first Russian-controlled areas hit by the dearth, public gasoline sales were cut weeks ago.
“The fuel supply situation remains tense and will persist for some time,” Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, warned again in a statement on Wednesday. “On certain days, fuel will not be available for sale.”
Aksyonov’s announcement comes after Crimea said on June 22 that it was temporarily ceasing fuel sales to everyone but the federal government and essential services.
Much of the crisis there stems from a Ukrainian campaign to besiege the peninsula by drone strike. Crimea is connected to mainland Europe and Russia by several important land bridges, all of which have come under intense attack in recent weeks.
A new class of longer-range fixed-wing drones, often equipped with artificial intelligence to improve survivability against signal jamming, has enabled Kyiv’s forces to hammer these bridges, supply routes, and trucks in the south for months.
A key target has been the R-280, a major supply highway running from Rostov-on-Don to Crimea via the western coastline of the Sea of Azov. Traffic on the route dropped over 70%, Ukraine’s forces said in June.
The strikes continue. On Wednesday, drone pilots from Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said that they had hit more than 360 oil tankers and heavy transport vehicles bound for Crimea in a single week.
“Every tanker and every unit of heavy transport on this route is a legitimate military target,” the drone warfare branch said in its statement.
The fuel problem stretches beyond Crimea. Ukraine has spent the better part of the last year repeatedly bombarding Russian oil and gas infrastructure with long-range, jet-launched drones.
Russian government statistics have since said gasoline production fell by 17%, with about a third of local oil refining capacity damaged.
Last week, Ukrainian forces said they’d knocked out 42.74% of Russia’s oil refining capacity, though this has yet to be corroborated publicly by outside sources.
Regardless, the toll is starting to show. At least 78 of Russia’s 83 regions are suffering from gasoline or diesel shortages, with 48 of these areas introducing some form of purchase cut or limit, per an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
In Moscow, by far Russia’s wealthiest city, lines of cars have been seen in recent days outside petrol stations. Social media posts in other regions show queues snaking for miles; one viral video shows a man saying he’d been waiting for 36 hours in Zabaykalsky Krai in the Russian Far East.
The Kremlin responded on Wednesday by banning diesel and jet fuel exports, saying it had begun importing petrol and sourcing products with “lower environmental standards.”
Russian leader Vladimir Putin acknowledged the shortages last week, but has so far sought to assure the nation that they will pass, calling them “temporary matters” in a meeting with officials on Wednesday.
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