Ukrainian drone strikes have forced Russia to import gasoline—shipping cargoes from as far as Morocco to an Arctic port—and to pay for the damage twice over. Moscow now subsidizes both the refineries the drones keep setting on fire and the foreign fuel replacing what those refineries can no longer produce.

Russia caps fuel prices at home below what refiners could earn abroad, and the budget pays them the difference—so they keep supplying the domestic market rather than exporting everything. The payments, together with related reimbursements, reached 1.221 trillion rubles ($15 billion) from April through July, Finance Ministry data show—close to the full annual budget of Moscow Oblast, the region ringing the capital.

Those monthly payments have roughly halved since spring, to about 190 billion rubles ($2.4 billion) in July, as lower oil prices narrowed the gap the subsidy fills.

Russia cannot keep its refineries running

Russian crude processing fell to 3.6 million barrels a day in July, its lowest since 2002 and roughly a third below the seasonal norm. Ukraine has hit at least 24 of Russia’s 34 largest refineries in some 50 strikes.

Fuel shortages and rationing now affect 50 million people—about a third of Russia’s population—according to a Financial Times analysis. Russia runs the world’s third-largest oil-refining industry, so the lost output has tightened diesel and gasoline supply beyond its borders. With less capacity to refine at home, Russia has had to export more raw crude and less high-value fuel.

With its refineries down, Moscow is now paying a second subsidy—this time to the importers bringing gasoline in. Gasoline is arriving by rail from Belarus and Kazakhstan and by sea from India and, in mid-July, Morocco: a cargo loaded at the port of Tangier and discharged at Murmansk, on the Arctic coast.

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Ukraine has already named the import route as a target. In early July, presidential sanctions commissioner Vladyslav Vlasiuk called Russia’s new reliance on imported fuel a fresh vulnerability and said Kyiv had raised a response with the European Commission—though the EU’s next sanctions package, now in preparation, is so far built mainly around other measures.

A country that ships crude out of the Arctic is now shipping gasoline in through it.

Ukrainian drones struck one of Russia's five largest oil refineries in Yaroslavl on the morning of 6 August, setting off several fires across the site, monitoring channels reported. Open-source analysts placed the blazes on the refinery grounds, while the region's governor claimed his air defenses downed the entire raid. The strike continued a months-long campaign that has pushed Russian oil refining to its lowest level in more than two decades.

Fires break out across the refinery

Ukrainian monitoring Telegram channel Exilenova+ first reported the attack around 4:00, later sharing footage that showed thick black smoke rising from several points on the site. Fire Point, the Ukrainian company that builds the FP-1 long-range drone, said Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the plant with the domestically made FP-1s. Open-source analysts geolocated one blaze to the refinery grounds. Astra, a Russian news Telegram channel, reported one fire on the plant's territory and a second it had not yet located.

One of Russia's biggest refineries

Slavneft-YANOS, also called the Novo-Yaroslavl refinery, ranks among Russia's five largest and is the biggest in the country's central regions. It processes about 15 million tonnes of crude a year into gasoline, diesel, aviation kerosene, jet fuel, lubricants, and bitumen. Rosneft and Gazprom jointly control 99.7% of its parent company, Slavneft. The plant's fuel feeds central Russian industry, airports, the Northern Railway, and military sites. It sits more than 700 kilometers from Ukraine's border.

Russia claims it downed every drone in the region

Yaroslavl Governor Mikhail Yevraev first reported the region was under drone attack around 3:00 and closed the highway toward Moscow. He later claimed the region had repelled its most massive drone raid, downing all 88 drones with no casualties. Yevraev stated that a detached house burned, windows were shattered in several apartment blocks, and residents' cars were damaged. 

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed it destroyed 605 drones over several regions overnight.

The plant has burned repeatedly in 2026, catching fire on 28 March, 26 April, 8 and 22 May, and 6 and 16 July before the latest hit. That made 6 August the seventh strike on the refinery this year. In the 16 July attack, an FP-1 struck the plant's tank farm.

Russia's refining in retreat

Ukraine has sharply expanded its FP-1 deep strikes on refineries this year, knocking out around 26 plants. By late July, only eight had fully restarted and at least 11 partly. Seven refineries stayed idle. Russian refining fell to 3.6 million barrels a day, its lowest since May 2002. 

Earlier, Moscow banned fuel exports, boosted gasoline imports from Belarus 25-fold, and turned to India and Morocco. It also let refiners sell Euro-2 gasoline, a grade banned in Russia since 2013, through 1 July 2027.

Drivers in Russia’s Altai Republic had found a way around fuel rationing: fill up just before midnight, then again just after, and pocket two days’ gasoline in one stop.

This week, the Siberian republic—bordering Kazakhstan, China, and Mongolia—closed that window, ordering fuel stations to allow each car only one fill every 24 hours. The fix is local and granular. The cause is not: Ukraine’s drone war on Russian refineries has reached Siberia’s gas pumps.

Ukraine has spent months striking the plants that turn Russian crude into gasoline and diesel, driving the country’s refining to a two-decade low and sending its drones as far as the giant Omsk refinery, roughly 2,500 kilometers away, hit on 6 July.

Kyiv calls the campaign its long-range sanctions and says Siberia is within reach. The result is now showing up at pumps far from any front line.

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The Altai Republic’s government set out the rule on its official Telegram channel: stations scan each car’s registration into a regional system and refuse a second sale until 24 hours have passed, with fuel sold only to drivers who show a vehicle registration.

The old daily limit reset at midnight, letting drivers take one ration late in the evening and another once the clock turned. “There is fuel, but the flows need regulating to supply everyone—both essential services and citizens,” Alexander Prokopyev, the head of the republic’s government, said. Farmers, alongside emergency crews, get the one exception: a second fill between 05:00 and 07:00.

Fill up just before midnight, then again just after, and pocket two days' gasoline in one stop.

Rationing tightens as the government grounds itself

The caps are tight. In the districts where most of the republic’s 210,000 people live, drivers may buy 30 liters of gasoline a day—about half a tank—or 50 liters of diesel. Elsewhere, the ceilings are 50 and 100.

The government has reined in its own officials too, cutting work trips, banning out-of-region travel on state vehicles, and moving meetings online to save fuel. The limits are set to run until 1 September.

Altai is not alone. Rationing now stretches across dozens of Russian regions, and the strain is spilling past the pump: about 25 regions have raised transit fares or cut routes to conserve fuel, from Stavropol in the south to Irkutsk and Buryatia in the east.

The federal government is steering supply by hand—Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on 25 July that officials were weighing extra shipments to the Altai Republic, neighboring Altai Krai, Yakutia, Irkutsk Oblast, and Trans-Baikal.

Next door in the Kuzbass coal region, the shortage is being counted in days of jet fuel. Governor Ilya Seredyuk said this week that 213 rail tankers were en route and that reserves stood at 16 days of jet fuel for Kemerovo’s airport and seven for Novokuznetsk’s—figures from a single official’s briefing, not independently confirmed.

Moscow has conceded the point: Putin acknowledged the strikes are causing fuel problems. The Altai Republic’s own announcements name a different culprit—speculation and panic-buying among its drivers.