Fuel Shortage Reaches Moscow After Strikes on Refineries
Ukrainian strikes have pushed Russian oil refining to its lowest level since 2009 and spread petrol shortages all the way to the Moscow region.
- Ukraine hit 15 Russian refineries between January and May, with 16 strikes in May alone, a record for the war.
- Refining capacity has fallen to its lowest level since 2009, according to Bloomberg.
- Petrol shortages have spread to Belgorod, Kursk, Ryazan, parts of the Moscow region and annexed Crimea.
- Filling stations in New Moscow have capped sales at 60 litres of petrol and 100 litres of diesel per customer.
For Serbia, which has long tied the bulk of its oil and fuel supply to the Russian market and to Russian capital inside its own energy sector, what is now happening at Russian petrol pumps is not a distant story but an early signal about the stability of a supplier Belgrade leans on. Ukraine’s armed forces have driven Russian oil refining to its lowest level since 2009, after a run of drone strikes that systematically targeted refineries deep inside the country through the spring.
The petrol shortage, confined for months to border regions, has now reached the capital itself. According to figures cited by Bloomberg, roughly 40 percent of Russia’s primary refining capacity was offline in May, and the fallout is being felt at pumps across a string of regions. In New Moscow, part of the wider metropolitan area, some stations have capped purchases at 60 litres of petrol and 100 litres of diesel per buyer, a measure the capital has not seen in years.
How badly have the strikes weakened Russian refining?
The numbers point to pressure Russia’s energy hinterland has not faced before. Between January and May 2026, Ukraine struck 15 Russian refineries, and in May alone it carried out 16 attacks, the most in any single month since the war began. The geography of the shortage mirrors that map of strikes: fuel is scarce across Belgorod, Kursk and Ryazan, in parts of the Moscow region and on annexed Crimea.
The estimate that one in every two large refining plants was intermittently out of service upends the logic of a Russian energy system that spent decades counting on spare capacity. Sergei Vakulenko of the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center argues that this cushion has now been shaken.
The Ukrainian attacks seem to have knocked out most of the spare refining capacity that Russia has traditionally maintained.
The result is a paradox that defines this phase of the war. While the domestic market runs short of refined fuel, Russia is exporting crude at the highest rate since the start of the invasion. Exports averaged 3.46 million barrels per day in 2026, a wartime high. The oil that cannot be processed at home is leaving for foreign markets in its raw form.
What the shortage means for Russia’s interior and the region
For Russia’s war economy, the energy sector is at once a source of revenue and a point of vulnerability, and Ukraine’s strategy is aimed precisely at severing that link. Strikes on refineries do not hit the front line directly, but they do hit logistics, the civilian market and public trust in domestic suppliers.
For an observer in Belgrade, three points stand out:
- The price and availability of fuel on the Russian market shape the contracts and pricing of companies tied to Russian capital across the region.
- Crude exports at a wartime high are redrawing supply flows and could reshuffle who sells refined fuel to whom.
- How lasting the damage is remains an open question, since rebuilding refinery units under a sanctions regime on imported equipment takes far longer than in peacetime.
What was until recently a local border nuisance has grown into systemic pressure climbing toward the centre of the Russian state. For countries that anchor part of their energy security to the Russian supply chain, the question is no longer abstract: how long can a supplier that is rationing fuel to its own citizens serve as a foundation for anyone else’s supply?
