{"id":47430,"date":"2026-06-30T20:14:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/47430\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T20:14:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:14:25","slug":"how-severe-is-russias-energy-shortage-because-of-ukrainian-strikes-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/47430\/","title":{"rendered":"How severe is Russia\u2019s energy shortage because of Ukrainian strikes? | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian drone attacks on energy infrastructure<\/a> are intensifying fuel shortages in Russia, triggering a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin of the gravity of the situation.<\/p>\n

In unusually candid public remarks to a meeting of senior officials on Sunday, Putin explicitly acknowledged that Ukrainian strikes had led to fuel rationing.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are well aware that problems for \u2060drivers and for businesses persist,\u201d he said, according to Russian news agencies. \u201cUnfortunately, there are still queues at petrol stations too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure,\u201d he said, adding that the situation required \u201csystemic measures that match the scale of current challenges\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities<\/a> in recent months, hitting Russia\u2019s crude oil and refined products sales, its main source of export income and the main source of funding for its war efforts.<\/p>\n

Norsi, Russia\u2019s fourth-largest oil refinery and the second-largest producer of petrol, suspended operations last week following a Ukrainian drone attack. The facility is located near Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of Moscow.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s military said it also struck Russia\u2019s Orenburg gas processing plant, which has a capacity of 45 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. It is located in the southern Urals near Russia\u2019s border with Kazakhstan, more than 1,200km (750 miles) beyond the front lines in Ukraine<\/p>\n

Last week, Ukraine also used long-range drones<\/a>\u00a0to hit two oil facilities in Kerch in Crimea and the port of Kavkaz, used to bring fuel to the Russian front lines.<\/p>\n

Long-range drones also hit the Slavyansk and the Yaroslavl oil refineries<\/a>, about 300 and 700 kilometres (190 and 435 miles) from the front line, respectively. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in the aftermath of the attack on Sunday that this meant \u201cfewer resources serving Russia\u2019s war machine\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue our operations that weaken Russia\u2019s ability to wage this war,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n

\"INTERACTIVE-WHO(Al Jazeera)What impact are Ukraine\u2019s attacks having?<\/p>\n

Ukraine has been targeting Russia\u2019s oil refineries, oil storage sites, oil and gas pumping stations and oil loading ports with strikes in that order of priority, according to Indra Overland, who heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)\u2019s Center for Energy Research and is Associate Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the refineries, the Ukrainians especially target the fluid catalytic cracking units. These are the \u2018hearts\u2019 of the refineries and are difficult, expensive and time-consuming to replace,\u201d Overland told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia has attempted to cover some of them with scaffolding and nets, but these are ineffective against Ukraine\u2019s most powerful home-grown weapons such as the FP-5.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Flamingo FP-5 is a long-range missile, which can travel 3,000 kilometres (1,860 miles) and carry a payload of more than 1,000 kilogrammes (2,200lbs). It was developed by Ukrainian defence manufacturer Fire Point.<\/p>\n

Ukraine is specifically targeting Russia\u2019s geographically vast energy infrastructure and especially \u201cthe system\u2019s connective tissue\u201d, Margarita Zavadskaya, senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s campaign has exposed how thinly protected and overstretched this critical infrastructure has become in the world\u2019s largest country by landmass, Zavadskaya said.<\/p>\n

It is hard to say how much impact the resulting fuel crisis will have on Russia politically, however.<\/p>\n

It is \u201cunlikely to produce regime collapse or mass revolutionary dynamics,\u201d according to Zavadskaya. \u201cThe impact is mostly attritional, cumulative and politically corrosive rather than immediately destabilising.\u201d<\/p>\n

How badly has Russia been hit economically?<\/p>\n

Overland, at NUPI, said the impact of Ukrainian attacks on Russia\u2019s domestic economy has been \u201cgrowing by the day\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of Russia\u2019s regions have introduced limits on the sale of petrol and diesel, and some gas stations have shut down or have queues that can take up to 12 hours to get through,\u201d he said. \u201cThis, in turn, disrupts the movement of people getting to work, transportation of goods, taxis and agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuel shortages in Russia \u2013 the world\u2019s largest wheat exporter \u2013 are also expected to disrupt the critical July-August harvest season, Overland added, when fuel is needed to run tractors, water pumps and other machinery on farms, as well as transport produce to market.<\/p>\n

The fuel crisis is also triggering \u201cpanic buying and hoarding that exacerbate the situation\u201d, the analyst said. \u201cIt also presses up inflation throughout the economy because the supply of almost all goods \u2013 including food, medicines, building materials \u2013 involves the use of fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s military sector has not been affected as much, as it remains the top priority. Markku Kivinen, director of the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, Finland, said Russia must prioritise military logistics and, if necessary, will bypass the needs of consumers to keep up the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis affects the legitimacy of the government but does not immediately cause weakening of the war effort,\u201d Kivinen said.<\/p>\n

Why did Putin admit to fuel shortages?<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Russia\u2019s president admitted that Ukrainian attacks on infrastructure facilities \u201ccreate problems\u201d. \u201cRight now we\u2019re observing a certain shortage, but it\u2019s not critical,\u201d Putin said in a Kremlin-published interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will certainly ensure the security of both the country and our citizens, as well as the inviolability of Russia\u2019s borders,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Zavadskaya, at FIIA, said the Russian president was forced to admit the fuel shortages \u201cbecause they had become too visible to deny\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA complete denial would have looked implausible and would have incurred even higher reputation costs of the crisis,\u201d the analyst said. \u201cBut the admission followed a familiar Putin pattern, especially visible before and during major crises: The president remains in control, while lower-level officials and managers become responsible for failures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kivinen, at the University of Helsinki, said Putin may have decided to admit the impact of Ukrainian strikes in order to \u201clink this escalation with his war narrative\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can legitimise his own escalation steps by referring to the growing risks to Russian infrastructure,\u201d the analyst told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

What happens next?<\/p>\n

Recent events may fuel public discontent in Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepeated attacks undermine the implicit fiscal-security bargain: Citizens pay taxes, accept repression, and tolerate war in exchange for order and basic state protection,\u201d Zavadskaya said. \u201cWhen refineries burn, fuel becomes scarce, and authorities improvise, the population sees that the state cannot fully provide what it claims to monopolise: security, stability and provision.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Overland, at NUPI, handling the energy crisis may be about to get even harder for Putin. \u201cAn interesting question is why Ukraine does not strike more pipelines, as these are thousands of kilometres long and impossible to protect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason may be that they are relatively cheap and easy to repair, but it is also possible that Ukraine is saving this for a later stage. Destruction of natural gas pipelines will have a greater impact at the start of the heating season in the autumn.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian drone attacks on energy infrastructure are intensifying fuel shortages in Russia, triggering a rare admission from President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[9551,188,271,591,8,1040,391,9,270,790,349,7,2073],"class_list":["post-47430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-border-disputes","tag-conflict","tag-energy","tag-europe","tag-headlines","tag-international-trade","tag-military","tag-news","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-top-stories","tag-weapons"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116840894544521118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}