The longer Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine continues, the more things in Russia (and occupied Ukraine) seem to be breaking.
The lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty as several months of Ukrainian attacks have set oil refineries ablaze and choked supplies for motorists across the vast country.
Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s major Ufa oil refinery for the second time in a week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.
Almost daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have created a fuel crisis and heaped political pressure on the Kremlin as its all-out invasion of Ukraine stretches into its fifth year.
The Ufa refinery is one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants and is located more than 600 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said on social media.
Ukraine also struck a plant producing missile components in Russia’s Penza region southeast of Moscow, some 300 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Russian officials did not confirm the strikes, which could not be independently verified. The Russian Defense Ministry reported intercepting 179 Ukrainian drones over 16 Russian regions, the annexed Crimea and waters of the Azov and the Black Sea.
Evidence suggests that Ukrainian drones are most often intercepted by their targets.
Fuel rationing has been introduced in many Russian regions, with hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads. Social media videos show drivers aghast at the lines or swearing at empty gas pumps and rising prices. The mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk even ordered portable toilets brought in to accommodate those in line.
Siberia is full of oil, yet there’s still a shortage of gasoline there.
The fuel crisis — unprecedented for a nation that is one of the world’s biggest energy producers — has brought Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine home to ordinary Russians like few other events in the war, now in its fifth year.
It drew a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged “problems persist for both motorists and businesses,” and “there are still queues at petrol stations, and finding the right grade of petrol isn’t always easy.”
He insisted the shortages are “not critical” and “temporary.”
I’m sure the situation will ease once the three day special military operation concludes…
But that appeared to do little to reassure at least one motorist in Moscow, the wealthy capital typically better-insulated from economic shocks than the rest of the country.
“I think the situation is not very good,” the motorist waiting in line told the Associated Press on Monday, the day after Putin’s televised remarks.
“They say one thing on television, and in reality it’s another. … People are queueing everywhere,” he added, declining to give his full name out of safety concerns.
Zelensky on Monday echoed that sentiment, writing on Telegram that “Putin can go on and on, claiming on TV that he supposedly has everything under control,” but Russians can see that the war “has reached the point where even an oil state — a gas station, as Russia used to be called — is now facing gas shortages.”
An AP count shows over 50 reported attacks by Ukraine on oil refineries, depots, terminals and other energy infrastructure in Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula since March. Often, the same facility was hit more than once -– such as the refinery in the Black Sea town of Tuapse that was struck four times.
The amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day — the lowest level in over two decades, said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence.
“The outages are extraordinary,” he said.
Gasoline production has fallen 17% to 850,000 barrels a day, from 1.03 million a day a year ago — far short of what the domestic market needs. Russia exports relatively little gasoline.
About a third of Russia’s oil refining capacity is offline, said Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy, noting that because refineries don’t publicly confirm the extent of the damage, his estimate comes from anecdotal evidence and oil industry sources.
“It comes at a very critical time for the Russian economy, in that the agriculture season, particularly the harvest season, is now starting to ratchet up,” increasing demand, Weafer said.
Ukrainian officials describe the strikes as a campaign to pressure Moscow to end the war by undermining military logistics and supply lines and weakening its ability to mount front-line assaults.
In particular, Kyiv has sought to isolate Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine in 2014 in a move most nations don’t recognize. Attacks this year forced the Moscow-installed authorities to enact fuel rationing on the peninsula in May and halt sales to civilians there altogether. Limited sales later resumed in the city of Sevastopol.
Speaking of occupied Crimea, so many people are seeking to escape the resource-starved peninsula that the traffic jam at the Kerch Strait Bridge is visible from space.
“Thousands of cars rushed the last route out of Crimea, now jamming the Kerch Bridge with thousands of cars at a complete standstill.”
“The delays result not only from the number of people wanting to leave, but also from repeated closures during Ukrainian drone alerts, intensified security inspections, and worsening logistical disruption across Crimea.”
A “few motorists still driving into Crimea strapping industrial fuel tanks onto the roofs of their cars and connecting them directly to their fuel tanks with hoses. The improvised setup is extremely dangerous, creating obvious fire and explosion risks, yet many drivers appear willing to accept those dangers simply to carry enough gasoline to be able to escape the peninsula once they finished what they came to Crimea to do.”
“Russian military decisions are simultaneously making the situation even worse, as Russian commanders have redirected both civilian and military traffic onto the Kerch Bridge. Instead of being one of several transport arteries, the bridge has become the peninsula’s primary logistics lifeline, working beyond its practical capacity, due to the Ukrainian strikes that have repeatedly disrupted the Melitopol-Mariupol corridor and heavily damaged northern Crimean crossings.”
“Military convoys, fuel trucks, civilian traffic, and freight vehicles all compete for the same limited crossing. Rather than solving Russia’s logistics problems, rerouting traffic has concentrated nearly everything onto a single vulnerable bottleneck.”
“The resulting congestion has forced Russian authorities to adopt extraordinary measures, declaring a state of emergency within Crimea. This grants them broad powers to restrict civilian movement and establish procedures to prioritize military transportation over civilian traffic.”
“Residents increasingly complain that gasoline has become unavailable and that public transportation is being disrupted because minibuses cannot obtain sufficient fuel. These shortages coincide with repeated Ukrainian strikes targeting Crimea’s broader energy network, including the Kerch and Simferopol thermal power plants, electrical substations, gas compressor stations, and various major and minor fuel and gas depots. Together, these attacks have affected electricity generation, gas distribution, fuel storage, and logistics simultaneously, causing rolling blackouts, water supply disruptions, and persistent fuel shortages affecting civilian life.”
“Instead of easing the burden by facilitating departures, Russian authorities are using emergency powers to preserve transport capacity primarily for military logistics. Civilians therefore bear much of the cost of sustaining Russian operations, finding themselves trapped by restrictions while essential supplies are increasingly directed toward the military.”
And after four years of war, the Russian military is running out of, well, pretty much everything.
“Russia is running out of bombers, and it can’t replace those that are being destroyed. There’s a deep crisis in Russia’s aviation sector, and it spells disaster for Putin’s plans for 2027.”
“There is nothing that demonstrates Russia’s problems better than what is happening with its Tu-22 bombers. On June 16, Euromaidan Press revealed that Russia started its war with Ukraine with a stockpile of 41 Tu-22M3 bombers. Now, it may only have nine left.” Euromaidan is, of course, firmly pro-Ukrainian.
‘Every Tu-22 that goes down is an airframe that can’t be used to pelt Ukraine with missiles and bombs.”
“Russia hasn’t made any new Tu-22s since 1993. Russia has been losing Tu-22s by the bucketload, and absolutely none of them are being replaced.”
“Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, at least 24 Tu-22s have been destroyed or damaged, and all that Russia has in place is a modernization program designed for the declining stockpiles of Tu-22s that it still has in its arsenal. There are no spare parts. Even minor damage to one of these bombers can result in it being completely written off, as Russia doesn’t have what it needs to make repairs. That means that every Tu-22 that goes down is a bomber that Russia will never be able to replace.”
“It’s a systemic production failure problem that extends to the entire Russian aerospace industry, both military and commercial.”
Management turnover at Tupolev snipped.
“Russia’s Defense Ministry received almost $53.5 million in combined settlements from Tupolev. That number is interesting, because it is roughly the same as the cost to modernize a Tu-95MS bomber, and it’s about a quarter of the amount that Russia spends to build a Tu-160M. In other words…not a whole lot. And if that’s all that Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed, it reveals plenty about the state of Russian bomber manufacturing. The company that is supposed to be refurbishing Russia’s aging fleet could even push one Tu-95MS out of its doors. Looking beyond that, the company was also supposed to produce four Tu-160Ms for the ministry, all of which were to be built between 2022 and 2023, and delivered in 2025. But only two ever reached the Russian military, and both arrived in 2026, which is a year after the initial deadline.”
“One of the biggest problems Russia faces [is] being forced to burn through multiple old tanks just to get one up and running again. Euromaidan Press reported on this issue in April, noting that Russia was running out of T-72Bs that it could refurbish, which had led to it cannibalizing older T-72As just to get some metal on the battlefield. At the time, Russia had between 800 and 900 T-72As, though only around 500 could be possible candidates for refurbishment. The rest would have to be stripped for parts to be used in that refurbishment, and Russia would likely have been far short of what it needed to get all 500 possible refurbs functioning.”
“Now, take that problem and transplant it into a bomber fleet for which there are only a few dozen airframes available, rather than hundreds. Cannibalization still has to happen. But Russia runs out of the parts it needs much faster, and, as with its tanks, it doesn’t have the facilities needed to build more. These are, by and large, Soviet-era bombers, and Russia has long shut down many of the plants that made the parts used to build these airframes decades ago.”
“Since production resumed on the Tu-160 in 2019, only six have been delivered to the Russian armed forces. Russia lost twice that many bombers to Operation Spiderweb alone, and it’s lost many more besides.”
“This is a problem that we see across all of Russia’s military. The Soviet-era systems on which Putin has relied so heavily in the war against Ukraine are one-and-done. Geopolitical Monitor says that in the air, Su-25 close support aircraft are no longer produced, meaning that the airframe has the same problems as Russia’s bomber fleet. The T-80 tank family also can’t be replaced, which means every ‘new’ T-80 we see on the battlefield is really just another refurb that Russia managed to create by stripping away parts from other T-80s.”
“TL;DR: If it was made during the Soviet era, Russia no longer has the tools or know-how to replace it.”
“Russia is launching 180 to 250 glide bombs at Ukraine every single day, which requires the flying of 200 sorties per day, which, in turn, places enormous amounts of stress on pilots and their airframes. Now, consider this rate of aerial attack when stacked up against Russia’s bomber problem. Russia’s bombers are used to launch cruise missiles and glide bombs. Every single time one of those bombers goes down, be it to a Ukrainian attack, a crash at a base, or simple maintenance issues caused by flying far too many sorties, that’s an attacking threat that is permanently grounded.”
“Slowly, but surely, Russia is running out of its irreplaceable Tu-22s and Tu-95s, and it isn’t building Tu-160s at anywhere near the rate needed to keep up the pressure. When the bombers run out, the attacks stop.”
Then there’s the nuclear issue, as all those dwindling numbers of bombers are nuclear weapon capable. “Given how much Russia loves to throw around its nuclear weight as an intimidation tactic, the real-time crumbling of a large part of its nuclear triad is a situation that actively weakens Russia on the global stage, not just in Ukraine. Russia’s nuclear threat is losing muscle by the month.”
Russia has similar problems keeping it’s seized Boeing and Airbus airliners flying. “In January, The Moscow Times reported that one of Russia’s solutions for the inevitable shortages this situation creates is going to be to send Russian airlines mothballed Soviet-era aircraft in 2026 and 2027. That isn’t a solution. It’s a continuation of the problem that we’re seeing in Russia’s bomber fleet.”
“Not even Russia’s modern airframes can escape the sanctions problems. In both the Su-34 and Su-35S, around 80% of the critical electronic components needed to make those jets usable are made in the West.”
“There is no road to recovery that can be followed while the Ukraine war continues.”
Every day Putin continues his illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, more and more things in Russia break.