Gasoline in Russia is being rationed from its western Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad to Vladivostok in the Far East.
The nation that parades as an energy superpower cannot keep its own drivers on the road. In some regions, motorists are limited to 10-20 liters per visit — if they can find gasoline at all. In others, only diesel remains.
Prices have soared as well. Wholesale gasoline has jumped over 50% since January, hitting record highs, while diesel costs have surged nearly 10% in just a month, making fuel increasingly unaffordable for ordinary Russians.
Pavel Bazhenov, head of the Independent Fuel Union, said the measures were simply to help station owners “weather the difficult period of shortages” and prevent more closures — a fate that has already hit smaller operators.
Last week the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia reported that Lukoil, the country’s second-largest oil producer, had banned the sale of gasoline in jerry cans at some Moscow stations and stopped accepting fuel cards at stations in Nizhny Novgorod in a bid to curb panic buying.
This is not just wartime inconvenience. It’s a warning flare, exposing the deepening cracks in Russia’s war economy.
The cause? Relentless Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries, supply chains breaking apart and a Kremlin scrambling to pretend all is well. On some days, Russia’s refining capacity has collapsed by nearly a fifth, with exports from key ports sharply curtailed.
In fact, according to Kommersant, about half of Crimea’s gas stations have already run dry. The situation is dire in the Far East and the Volga Federal District too, where fuel supply chains stretch thin and shortages bite hardest.
Since August, Ukraine has escalated drone strikes on Russian refineries, knocking at least five plants partly or fully offline. The outages have cut Russia’s refining capacity by 17%, equal to about 1.1 million barrels a day, and pushed wholesale fuel prices sharply higher.
For a state that parades as an energy superpower, it is a humiliation measured in barrels and rubles.
