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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Russia’s fuel crisis has moved from the pump to the harvest

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.