Why Russia’s Fuel Crisis Returned After Ukraine’s Renewed Refinery Strikes

As of 18 August 2026, Russia’s fuel shortage had entered a second wave. The immediate cause was not a lack of crude oil, but the loss of refinery capacity needed to turn crude into gasoline and move it to filling stations. Repeated Ukrainian drone attacks, seasonal demand and disrupted regional logistics pushed supply below demand; Moscow’s emergency measures softened the first shock but could not restore damaged plants quickly.

How the second wave developed

The first shortage began building in May and spread across Russia’s many time zones during the summer. By mid-July, the situation had temporarily stabilized in some areas as authorities redirected fuel from Siberia, increased imports from Belarus, restricted exports, subsidized supplies and allowed the sale of lower-grade fuel. Crimea remained particularly badly affected.

That stabilization was fragile. It relied largely on moving available fuel to priority markets and limiting domestic demand—not on a recovery in refinery output. When Ukraine resumed near-daily attacks on refining infrastructure in late July and early August, the supply cushion narrowed again. By 17 August, Reuters reported renewed shortages and tighter sales controls in at least 10 regions, with some stations in the Moscow region out of gasoline while diesel remained available at most stations.

Which regions brought back rationing?

The clearest restrictions reported during the second wave included:

• Orenburg oblast: After the 11 August strike on the Orsk refinery, authorities limited gasoline sales, banned filling fuel canisters, capped volumes and introduced odd-even licence-plate rules.
• Kaluga oblast: The region neighboring Moscow announced licence-plate-based rationing.
• Astrakhan oblast: Officials planned to limit sales to 40 liters per vehicle and temporarily restrict operations at some city filling stations.
• Moscow and the Moscow region: Some stations reported gasoline outages and renewed queues, although diesel supplies were generally less affected.

These reports show a disruption spread across much of the country, but “nationwide” should not be read as meaning that every Russian motorist simultaneously lost access to fuel. Conditions varied sharply by region, fuel grade and station. Earlier reporting found disruptions across nearly all of Russia’s regions and all 11 time zones, but there is no credible published count of how many individual people were unable to purchase gasoline.

The refinery bottleneck behind the shortage

The most firmly documented renewed outage involved Orsknefteorgsintez in Orenburg oblast. Following the 11 August drone attack and a subsequent fire, the refinery stopped processing. Regional authorities said the plant had shut down completely and that repairs could take up to six months, in part because damaged equipment was imported and sanctions could complicate replacement.

The Orsk shutdown added to earlier outages at major facilities. Reuters reported in July that damage had halted operations at several large refineries, including NORSI and Omsk, two of Russia’s largest gasoline producers.

Estimates of the total refining capacity affected varied by source and timing, but reporting put the broader disruption at more than one-third of Russian refining capacity. In early July, gasoline output was equivalent to only about 65% of seasonal average consumption, while diesel production was roughly at the level of domestic demand.

Those figures describe the cumulative effect of the wider drone campaign. They do not provide a precise measurement of the additional capacity lost only during the late-July and early-August attacks. That distinction matters: refinery damage, maintenance, seasonal demand and distribution problems can overlap, making any single estimate of incremental losses uncertain.

Why an oil producer had to import gasoline

Russia still produced crude oil. The problem was that crude could not be pumped directly into motorists’ tanks. It had to be processed into gasoline and diesel at refineries, then transported through a distribution network to regions where demand was rising.

That is why Moscow began seeking finished gasoline from abroad. Supplies arrived or were arranged from Belarus, Kazakhstan, India and Morocco, using rail and seaborne routes. At least one Indian gasoline cargo entered Russia’s domestic market by mid-August, according to Reuters reporting and shipping data.

Russia also imported approximately 30,000 metric tons of AI-92 gasoline from Morocco. The cargo was loaded at Tangier and discharged at Murmansk, illustrating how far Moscow was willing to go to replace missing domestic production.

The trade reversal was especially striking with India. Russian energy companies approached Indian refiners for additional gasoline after the strikes removed a significant portion of Russia’s refining capacity. At least 60,000 tons had reportedly been dispatched from India by early July, and the first known cargo reached Russia in August.

What the crude-to-India trade revealed

The unusual flow—Russian crude moving into global markets while Russian buyers imported refined gasoline from India—highlighted the difference between an oil shortage and a refining shortage. Russia had hydrocarbons, but not enough functioning capacity in the right locations to convert them into the products needed at home.

Some reporting described Indian gasoline supplied by Nayara Energy, a refiner with Russian Rosneft links, as potentially involving Russian crude. But the available evidence does not establish that every cargo imported into Russia was made from Russian oil. The safer conclusion is that the trade exposed a processing bottleneck: Russia was exporting or retaining crude while buying finished fuel because refinery capacity and domestic distribution had become the binding constraints.

Moscow’s emergency response

The Kremlin’s response combined supply controls, demand management and financial support. Measures reported during the crisis included:

• redirecting domestic fuel toward vulnerable regions;
• increasing rail deliveries from Belarus and other neighboring suppliers;
• arranging seaborne imports from India and Morocco;
• subsidizing fuel prices and imports;
• allowing lower-grade gasoline to be sold, despite concerns about possible engine damage; and
• restricting exports of gasoline, diesel, marine fuel and gas oils.

On 30 July, Russia extended its gasoline and diesel export bans through 31 January 2027. The policy therefore already extended beyond the end of 2026, making it impossible to provide a verified account of measures “through the end of 2026” as of 18 August.

Export restrictions could preserve more fuel for Russian motorists, but they could not immediately repair refineries. They also shifted the cost of the crisis: Russia sacrificed overseas product sales and export revenue while paying for imports, subsidies and emergency logistics.

Refined-product exports fell while crude exports held up

The data show the same structural split. Russian seaborne petroleum-product exports fell to 1.18 million barrels per day in July, down from 1.51 million barrels per day in June and the lowest level in at least a decade in the cited series. Crude exports, by contrast, remained high even though they fell from a June peak.

At the same time, gasoline and diesel supplies from Belarus reached a record monthly level in July. Together, the trends indicate that Russia was prioritizing domestic availability and importing replacement products while continuing to monetize crude.

That strategy could buy time, but it was not a substitute for refinery throughput. Imported gasoline had to travel long distances, compete with domestic price controls and reach the regions where shortages were most acute. The result was a system vulnerable to renewed attacks or any additional disruption in transport.

Did the crisis change Putin’s approval rating or war financing?

There is evidence of political pressure, but not enough to attribute a specific polling change to the fuel shortages. A July Levada measure cited by the BBC put Vladimir Putin’s approval at about 74%, described as a decline, while the same reporting said the share of respondents who believed Russia was heading in the right direction had fallen to 52% from 61% in May.

Other reports cited a lower figure, but the available sources do not provide a consistent, independently explained series that isolates the effect of fuel shortages. The defensible conclusion is that the crisis created visible domestic friction—queues, rationing, price pressure and official intervention—without proving a durable change in Putin’s political standing.

The effect on Russia’s ability to fund the war is similarly difficult to quantify. Lower refined-product exports, repair costs, import bills and fuel subsidies can reduce available revenue or increase state spending. But Russia’s continued crude exports and the limited time window covered by the reporting mean there is not enough evidence to claim that the second fuel crisis materially weakened the Kremlin’s ability to sustain its war effort.

The broader significance

The second wave demonstrated the limits of emergency redistribution. Moscow could move fuel, suppress exports and buy finished gasoline abroad, but those measures addressed the symptoms rather than the damaged processing base.

The central lesson is therefore straightforward: Russia’s vulnerability was created not by running out of oil, but by losing enough refinery capacity that a seasonal demand surge turned localized outages into a national supply problem. The Orsk shutdown, renewed rationing and the unusual India-to-Russia fuel flow all pointed to the same constraint—an oil exporter increasingly forced to compete for the refined products it once supplied to others.