More than 70 percent of Russian gas stations were reportedly out of fuel by late August. Ana Lejava, a Eurasia expert at Georgetown University, traces that to months of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, in an analysis for the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert.
Lejava argues that Russia, which used its energy exports for years to pressure its neighbors, is now having that leverage turned on itself. Ukraine sharply stepped up its strikes at the start of 2026. The result, she writes, is the worst fuel crisis in the country since the Soviet Union collapsed.
Rationing reaches Moscow
Refineries are running at historic lows. To cover the gap, the Kremlin has banned exports of a range of fuels and, for the first time, started importing gasoline from India. Temporary rationing now applies in more than half of Russia’s administrative regions, and even Moscow, the most privileged place in the country, has seen shortages.
Anger is visible online and at the pumps. Flareups have broken out at gas stations in several parts of the country. The Kremlin has sent security forces to stations in some regions and cracked down on critical posts. In one late August case in Volgograd, several residents were detained after they filmed a video appeal asking the authorities to deal with the lack of fuel.
Lejava warns the shortages could unsettle Russia’s most restive regions, from the North Caucasus to the ethnic minority areas of the Far East. Putin has drawn young men for the Ukraine war from those same places. They were poor to begin with, and the fuel shortage is hitting them especially hard.
Dependents feel it first
The strain reaches past Russia’s borders. Transnistria in Moldova, along with South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, depend on Moscow for energy.
Transnistria got an early taste. Gazprom cut natural gas flows to Moldova in early 2025 to punish its pro-Western government, and Transnistria went without gas through a harsh winter while its economy ground to a halt. Lejava says that episode showed how dependent the region is and gave Moldova a possible opening to pull it away from Russia.
In South Ossetia, Rosneft has run the filling stations since 2019, so a Russian shortfall leaves the local economy with no other supplier. In Abkhazia, summer fuel shortages prompted Georgian authorities to allow in roughly three hundred tons of petrol, the first Georgian fuel supplied to the breakaway region in more than three decades. Georgian officials called it humanitarian outreach. Lejava notes it could just as easily be read as indirectly serving Russian interests.
“Empty fuel pumps and cold apartments speak louder than any broadcast ever could about the reality of Russian decline,” she writes.
Central Asia looks elsewhere
In late August, Tajikistan’s energy minister said his country had roughly sixty days of fuel reserves left. Kazakhstan has cut energy exports after Ukrainian strikes damaged Caspian Pipeline Consortium infrastructure in Russia, which handles around 80 percent of its oil exports. Kyrgyzstan is building a refinery of its own and has imposed rationing while it waits for imports from China and Belarus.
Some leaders are voicing frustration. In July, Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Putin publicly that the war in Ukraine should end.
Lejava’s view is that Putin’s imperial ambitions are now running on fumes. If the crisis keeps widening over the coming months, she writes, Russia’s ability to project power across the former Soviet space will erode further. The Atlantic Council notes that the views are the author’s own.
