Russia Faces Spreading Fuel Shortages After Ukrainian Drones Pummel Refineries

 

Lines at gas stations are a growing headache for the Kremlin’s efforts to shield its citizens from the consequences of the four-year-old war/ 

 Footage shared online this week shows smoke and flames spewing from a crucial Moscow refinery after a series of drone strikes. SOCIAL MEDIA/REUTERS/

 By

 / Alexander Osipovich/ 

June 20, 2026 8:44 am ET/ 

 Ukraine is pounding Russian oil refineries with long-range drone strikes, leading to restrictions on fuel sales, surging gasoline prices and huge lines of cars outside gas stations hundreds of miles from the front lines./ 

 This week, drones repeatedly hit a refinery in Moscow that produces more than one-third of the fuel supply for the Russian capital and the surrounding region. Videos of the latest attack posted to social media on Thursday showed a massive fireball erupting from a storage-tank explosion and several other fires raging across the complex./ 

 It was the latest in more than two dozen strikes on Russian refineries since March, a growing headache for the Kremlin’s efforts to maintain economic normality and shield its citizens from the consequences of the brutal four-year-old war./

 Russia no longer releases official data on how much crude it processes into fuel, and it is often unclear how quickly refineries restart after strikes. But outside analysts estimate the recent wave of attacks has knocked more than 20% of Russian refining capacity offline./ 

 A person walks a dog in a park with thick smoke billowing in the background from a critical fuel facility./

 Long-range Ukrainian attacks have brought the war home for Moscow. EPA/Shutterstock 

“This level of disruption is unprecedented in the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said in a report on Wednesday./ 

 The hardest-hit regions are those near the front, especially Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014./ 

 In recent weeks, Kyiv’s drones have repeatedly struck fuel trucks on an overland supply route that runs through other occupied territories of Ukraine, causing gasoline shortages in Crimea. Local authorities ordered rationing, including a system of QR codes that drivers must show to get their allotted quota of fuel./ 

 Restrictions on fuel purchases have spread to 53 regions of Russia and occupied Ukraine, including some as far away as the Arctic and Siberia, independent Russian media outlet the Bell reported this week, based on a compilation of public announcements. Many of the rules prevent drivers from buying more than a tank’s worth of gas, to prevent hoarding/ 

 President Vladimir Putin has said little about the shortages. The authorities are working to ensure stable fuel supplies, Russia’s cabinet said Friday after a meeting devoted to the fuel market./ Man with hands on head observes cars queuing at a gas station in Donetsk./

 Cars lined up this week at a gas station in Donetsk, a Russian-held city in eastern Ukraine. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters/ 

 Frustrated drivers have taken to social media to bemoan the lengthy waits at gas stations. In one video shared on Telegram this week, a woman said she, her husband and their poodle waited 2½ hours to fill up their tank during a trip along the toll road between Moscow and St. Petersburg./ 

 “People are ready to pay any price for gasoline now,” a driver in Crimea said in a video circulated on a Telegram channel for Russian car enthusiasts on June 3./ 

 Last year, a similar campaign of drone attacks on refineries also forced fuel rationing in some Russian regions, before the refinery strikes came to a sudden halt in October./ 

 The latest barrages have grown more effective as Ukraine has targeted Russia’s biggest, most modern refineries, which make high-octane gasoline using hard-to-replace Western equipment, according to Vladimir Milov, a former Russian deputy energy minister./ 

 This is a very narrow, vulnerable target, these 10 to 15 refineries,” said Milov, who is now an opposition politician living abroad. “Simply put, if you attack them, there will be a crisis.”/

 Flames and thick black smoke rising from the Moscow oil refinery./ 

Ukraine described the latest attack on Moscow as a response to strikes on its own cities. AFP/

Getty Images/ 

Satellite image showing a destroyed oil storage tank and smoke at the Kapotnya refinery in Russia. A satellite image dated Friday shows a destroyed oil storage tank at the Moscow refinery. Satellite image ©2026 Vantor/

 Russia has also hammered Ukrainian energy infrastructure. This past winter, aerial assaults on Ukraine’s electricity grid and thermal power plants cut off heating for many Ukrainians, a failed bid to force Kyiv to capitulate by inflicting pain on civilians./ 

 Since then, rapid improvements in Ukrainian drone technology have helped force Russia’s much-larger military to practically halt its advances. / 

 Ukraine has used drones to attack Russian oil-export terminals in recent months, an audacious effort to keep Moscow from cashing in on the surge in oil prices caused by the U.S. war with Iran. That effort led to mixed results, though, as Russian crude exports held steady. /

 On Tuesday, a Ukrainian drone sneaked past air defenses of the Russian capital and struck a key processing unit at the Moscow refinery. Two days later, Ukraine targeted the same complex again, hitting it several times. The oil arm of state energy giant Gazprom, which owns the refinery, didn’t respond to a request for comment./ 

 “This is a fully justified response to Russian attacks on our cities and communities, and another important result of our warriors’ work against facilities that sustain Russia’s war machine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted after the Thursday attack./ 

 Footage of the attack spread quickly, despite an official ban on disseminating photos or video of the aftermath of drone strikes. Vladimir Kucherenko, a Russian nationalist YouTuber who uses the pseudonym Maxim Kalashnikov, wrote on social media Thursday that Moscow police had summoned him for questioning after he posted a video of the initial refinery attack./

 “I’ll let you know how it goes,” he told his followers. “Meanwhile, the enemy has dealt the plant another serious blow.”/

 Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8/ 

 Alexander Osipovich is a London-based business, finance and economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He previously covered exchanges and cryptocurrencies. Before joining The Wall Street Journal in 2016, he worked for The Moscow Times, Agence France-Presse and Risk.net, a trade publication/