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Russia’s fuel crisis has moved from the pump to the harvest
As the fuel crisis deepens, Russia’s regional governors are improvising.
Ukrainian drones have driven the country’s oil refining to its lowest level in more than two decades. Rationing has spread to more than 55 of Russia’s regions—forcing one southern region to order its officials onto bicycles, pushing farmers onto engine-wrecking fuel, and, with harvest season open, threatening Russia’s ability to bring in its own crops.
Rationing has spread to more than 55 of Russia’s regions—forcing one southern region to order its officials onto bicycles.
This is the domestic price of what Kyiv calls its “long-range sanctions”: a campaign that struck Russian refineries at least 194 times in the first half of 2026, 11 times the pace of a year earlier. For the first time, the crisis is no longer only queues at the pump—it is reshaping how Russia governs and feeds itself.
Officials on bikes, Cossacks at the pumps
In Stavropol Krai, Governor Vladimir Vladimirov has told his own administration to leave the cars in the garage. From 14 July, ministers and department heads may drive only within the regional capital, and any trip beyond it requires his personal sign-off; in town, Vladimirov told them to walk or cycle. The limit should free up about 3,000 tons of fuel a month for other users, he said.
A Sverdlovsk station raffled off a Lada.
Stavropol is not improvising alone. In the Leningrad region, Governor Alexander Drozdenko placed his officials under the same fuel limits as ordinary residents, arguing they should share the burden being asked of the public.
In Rostov, Governor Yuri Slyusar, who said drivers were growing aggressive in the queues, ordered Cossacks to keep watch at filling stations. A Sverdlovsk station raffled off a Lada; a Krasnodar pump charged 159 rubles ($2.03) a liter for AI-92 and 269 rubles ($3.44) for AI-100; in occupied Yevpatoria, grocery stores closed because owners could not fuel their generators; and in Kursk Oblast’s Kurchatov, filling stations began shutting for hours at a stretch, Echo FM reported.
In occupied Yevpatoria, grocery stores closed because owners could not fuel their generators.
Local outlets now print survival guidance. Auto instructor Viktoria Zameshaeva coached drivers to coast toward red lights and strip the roof rack, in a fuel-saving column carried across the Stavropol regional press.
From Karelia to Kamchatka: Russia rations fuel where drones strike and stockpiles it where they cannot
The crunch reaches the farms
The squeeze is now reaching the fields, in the middle of harvest season. To keep tractors running, on 2 July Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree allowing dirtier Euro-3 fuel back onto the domestic market—and Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service says it is already damaging newer engines.
“No prospects in sight.”
Aleksei Zhdanov, a farmer in Rostov Oblast, is pouring that low-grade Euro-3 diesel into his imported tractors and wrecking them, at 130 rubles ($1.66) a liter—double last year’s price, Zhdanov told 26.ru. “No prospects in sight,” he said. “We’re eating through old reserves, and no one knows what comes next.”
Smaller farms were cut off first, when refineries stopped releasing diesel to the traders they buy through. Drivers, meanwhile, are converting cars to run on gas: kits have jumped 30% in price and gone scarce, auto-center chief Ilya Nikolin told 26.ru.
“If we don’t lay in feed now, it’s a catastrophe.”
Further east, the shortage becomes a food-security problem. In Novosibirsk Oblast, one of Siberia’s main livestock regions, farmers say the autumn feed harvest is at risk; if the feed cannot be cut in time, they will have nothing to carry dairy herds through winter and will send the animals to slaughter in the fall.
“Rapeseed can wait until spring, sunflower until winter. But if we don’t lay in feed now, it’s a catastrophe. We won’t buy it anywhere. This is our food security,” said Grigory Vlasov, a dairy farmer and deputy head of Soyuzmoloko’s Siberian branch, quoted by 26.ru.
How the refining ran short
Behind the queues is a refining system Ukraine has been dismantling plant by plant. Three facilities alone—the Omsk, Moscow, and Kirishi refineries—account for a quarter of Russia’s refining, and drones have hit all three, as 26.ru reported.
The deepest blow came on 6 July, when long-range drones struck Russia’s largest oil refinery at Omsk, roughly 2,500 km from Ukraine—the last of Russia’s 11 biggest gasoline producers to be hit, and its only maker of the catalysts other refineries depend on.
Even before the summer, Ukrainian “middle-strikes” had forced some Russian units to cut diesel use by up to 20%.
By early July, only one major Russian refinery, Angarsk in Irkutsk Oblast, remained undamaged, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The shortages have reached the front line, too: even before the summer, Ukrainian “middle-strikes” had forced some Russian units to cut diesel use by up to 20%, former drone operator Dmytro Putiata told the same outlet.
The ceiling
Moscow has now banned gasoline and jet fuel exports, is weighing a diesel export ban, and—at a government meeting on 8 July—floated the idea of building small refineries. Energy analyst Igor Yushkov told 26.ru the mini-refinery idea was sound but slow, and that Russia’s deeper problem is a rigid system in which the oil majors pump, refine, and sell with no room for competition.
If the strikes hold their pace and each bites harder, the advantage swings to Kyiv.
This summer’s crunch is still milder than the shortage of late 2025, and supply now turns on a race between Ukrainian drones and Russian repair crews. If the strikes hold their pace and each bites harder, the advantage swings to Kyiv, Carnegie analyst Sergey Vakulenko wrote in a commentary.
Zhdanov, the Rostov farmer, was blunter about what comes next: whether he plows his land this year or abandons it, he said, only God knows.
