Inside energy-rich Russia complaints about oil refineries and pipelines are rising, but Kremlin officials and Moscow-friendly media don’t mention the Ukrainian drone strikes.

 Nov. 7, 2025

In a rare admission that Russia’s mighty energy industry is failing to deliver motorists sufficient fuel for cars and trucks, authorities in the Zabaykalsky Krai told the Kremlin stations in the east Siberian region that they were critically short of diesel and gasoline, and appealed to Moscow for assistance.

A letter filed by Governor Aleksandr Osipov, head of Zabaykalsky Krai, to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and the Russian Energy Ministry, said that the region was suffering “a severe gasoline shortage.” Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Osipov in 2018.

A sparsely populated territory roughly the size of Sweden and abutting Mongolia and China, Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai has run flat out of 92 octane fuel for retail sale, and only vehicles owned by state institutions, such as the emergency services and police, are able to operate using government reserves, the news platform breaking the story about the Osipov complaint, Chita.Ru, reported on Friday.

“This situation [severe gasoline shortages] is currently the case in most regions of Russia, even those with oil refineries,” the letter said in part, per the Chita.Ru report. Fuel shortages and even fuel station outages have been increasingly reported in independent Russian media since August, when a Ukraine kicked off a long-range bombardment campaign of Russian oil refineries and oil transportation infrastructure.

In the Zabaykalsky Krai region the major Kors and BRK fuel station networks had no 92-octane gasoline to sell at all, and coupon-based rationing was in effect for 95 and higher octanes, as well as for diesel. Authorities were working to renew gasoline deliveries to the region and a train-load of fuel had reached the city Chita and would be distributed to fuel stations “in the near future,” the report said, citing local officials.

The independent Russian news agency SOTA on Friday reported public comments by Denis Osipov (not related to Governor Osipov), Head of the Department of Consumer Market Activity of the Ministry of Economy, blaming the shortages on consumer panic and allegedly irresponsible media.

“The situation is stabilizing. Everything is being decided on the national level, but we at the regional level are also working,” Osipov said, per the SOTA report. He made no reference to Ukrainian drone strikes hitting Russia and targeting Russian energy infrastructure daily since late July.

Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilyov in an Oct. 27 statement broadcast by the state-owned newswire agency TASS acknowledged Russia’s retail fuel industry was suffering spot shortages and rising prices, but he did not mention Ukrainian drones strikes either, instead attributing the supply constrictions to seasonal demand and scheduled oil refinery maintenance.

Local Russian media by and large has toed the official line that Russia’s gasoline shortages are temporary and market-driven, and avoided linking fuel station queues and rationing with Ukrainian drone strikes. But gripes about rocketing fuel prices are pouring in.

The Belgorod region Pepel Belgorod news website reported diesel and gasoline prices had increased by about 15 percent since late October.

The Murmansk-Arctic Circle-based political scientists Andrei Nikulin in a Monday blog documenting 92 octane at 86 rubles/liter ($1.06), about 40 percent higher than in summer, complained: “We understand – 86 rubles per liter sounds like we transported gasoline on polar bears across the tundra with an orchestra. Alas, this is not a joke, but the reality of 2025.”

A rare exception to the official silence on Ukrainian drones was the local MUPP Format newspaper, a state-funded publication in a provincial district of Russia’s Volga basin Kazan region. An analytical article published on Thursday, headlined “Gasoline Shortage Reaches Northern Irkutsk Region” said that although heavy ice on rivers used for transport had cut into supply chains, and produced prices at an eye-watering 100 rubles/liter ($1.23), the main cause wasn’t in Russia.

“Drone attacks on refineries in the European part of the country in August and September caused extended plant shutdowns and is one of the main reasons for the fuel shortage in Russia. Although Siberian refineries were undamaged, their output was redirected to western and southern regions [and away from eastern regions like Irkutsk] to cover the resulting shortage,” the article said.

Damage caused by the Ukrainian drone strikes reaching at times more than 2,000 kilometers into Russian Federation territory has brought close to 40 percent of all of the Russian Federation’s oil processing capacity to a halt, the independent Russian news agency Astra reported on Friday.

If confirmed the figure would be twice most Western energy industry estimates of oil processing capacity degraded in Russia by Ukrainian drone strikes, which usually place the figure at around 20-25 percent of lost capacity.

The Kyiv Post count of Ukrainian drone and, less frequently, missile strikes targeting Russia’s energy industry starting in late July through Friday stood at 151 independently confirmed strikes. About 15 percent of those attacks hit electricity production or transport infrastructure, and did not target Russian oil processing capacity directly.

From Wednesday through Friday when this article was published, per those counts, Ukrainian drones kept to a long-established pace of two or three targets attacked every 24 hours: a power grid substation by the city Vladimir, a power plant by the city Oryel, a pair of oil transfer pump stations by Yaroslavl, a thermal plant by Kostroma, and oil refineries in Volgograd and Bashkortostan.

Strike drones flown by Ukraine’s special operations forces hit fuel storage reservoirs near the village of Bitumne, in the occupied Crimean peninsula, on Thursday and Friday, Kyiv Post attack records showed.

Downstream shortages of gasoline followed by diesel were first reported in remote Russian regions including the Zabaykalsky Krai in late August and early September, with rocketing gasoline and diesel prices, local rationing and shut-downs of entire fuel station networks spreading across most of Russia’s 11 time zones of territory.

The worst shortages have been reported in peripheral Russian regions with weak economies like the Pacific Ocean Maritime Provinces, south Siberian Buryatia and the Caucasus Mountain territory Dagestan. Two Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia – Luhansk and Crimea – likewise saw a near-collapse of retail fuel sales in October.

According to Russian news reports and trucking industry watch groups, by early November the only Russian regions not significantly affected by fuel supply contractions were the capital Moscow and districts around it, greater St. Petersburg, and some districts in the north.

Kilometers-long automobile queues at fuel stations, even in Russia’s oil-rich central Siberia Tyumen region, have sparked rare media criticism of authorities for poorly managing the national fuel distribution network and allowing fuel station operators to gouge motorists.

An October deep-dive analysis published by the state-run Lenta.Ru news platform identified “exchange rates,” “declining production capacity,” “logistical difficulties” and “artificial hype” as the cause of “disruptions.” The article quoted four government officials, interviewed eight market experts and cited statistics from three government agencies before concluding that Russia’s fuel problems are temporary but, maybe, more oil refineries in the Far East might need building.

The 2,600-plus-word Kremlin-sanctioned article did not mention a drone, an explosion, or Ukraine, even once.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/63832