RUSSIA IS NOW ASKING KAZAKHSTAN FOR GASOLINE AS ITS FUEL CRISIS DEEPENS
Russia has reportedly asked Kazakhstan to supply around 50,000 tons of AI-92 gasoline amid growing fuel shortages, according to Reuters.
That is a remarkable development for a country that built much of its economic and geopolitical power around being an energy giant.
According to the report, Russian gasoline production fell by roughly 25% year-on-year in late June after Ukrainian drone strikes forced refinery shutdowns. In response, Moscow is now reportedly considering fuel export restrictions, higher subsidies for refineries, and even gasoline imports to stabilize the market.
And the pressure is no longer isolated to one or two regions.
Restrictions on the sale of gasoline and diesel have already been introduced in 53 regions of the Russian Federation, including Khanty-Mansiysk — one of Russia’s main oil-producing regions — as well as Tomsk, Voronezh, Saratov, Kurgan, Adygea, and Tyumen.
That matters because this is no longer just a story about a few refineries burning after spectacular drone strikes.
It is becoming a systemic strain.
Ukraine’s long-range campaign has spent months hitting oil depots, refineries, fuel terminals, logistics routes, port infrastructure, and tankers tied to Russia’s wider fuel and supply network. The goal was never only to create dramatic footage. It was to force compounding disruptions across the machinery that keeps Russia’s economy and war effort running.
Now the effects are becoming harder to hide.
A country that exports energy to the world is now reportedly asking a neighbor for gasoline while imposing fuel restrictions across more than fifty of its own regions.
That is not a minor inconvenience.
That is what pressure on a national fuel system starts to look like.
