Ukraine’s Refinery Strikes Push Russia to Import Gasoline
-Ukraine’s systematic drone and missile strikes on Russian refineries are reshaping Russia’s fuel market and war financing.
Putin in 2023. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-With up to 40% of refining capacity disrupted, Moscow has extended bans on gasoline exports, partially restricted diesel exports, and faces rationing, panic buying, and rising prices at home.
-To stabilize supplies, Russia plans duty-free imports via the Far East and subsidies to cover price gaps, sourcing fuel from China, South Korea, Singapore, and Belarus, while loosening rules on octane additives.
-The refinery outages are cutting diesel exports to multi-year lows, threatening Kremlin revenues as Ukraine presses allies for tighter energy sanctions.
Ukraine’s War on Russia’s Petrol Industry is Forcing Moscow to Import Fuel Supplies
WARSAW, POLAND – Ukraine’s war on Russia’s oil industry and its petrol refineries is having the desired effect. Reports of petrol shortages in more regions of Russia and the imposition of rationing indicate that life on the home front is deteriorating. As an added complication, Moscow’s war machine is also feeling the pinch.
Over the past week, Ukraine’s Armed Forces carried out new strikes on Russian oil refineries. This has forced the Russian authorities to extend a ban on any petrol exports and also announce the introduction of a partial restriction on diesel fuel exports.
Ukraine’s campaign of strikes on Russian refineries is causing increasing panic-buying at petrol stations in Russia and occupied Crimea. There is a commensurate acceleration in prices, which are rising almost daily, and short-term petrol shortages are also being reported.
These strikes are unlikely to cause massive disruptions to global supply chains, say market experts who spoke to Ukraine’s Kyiv Independent and other media outlets. But what is also jeopardized is the cash flow that Russian President Vladimir Putin depends on to fund his military. The revenues from Russia’s highly profitable diesel and gasoline exports are experiencing sharp reductions.
Bringing Coals to Newcastle
This creates a paradox where Russia, once one of the largest oil producers prior to the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, is preparing to import gasoline from China, South Korea, and Singapore to stabilize its domestic market. These imports are necessary to offset a growing domestic fuel shortage within the country.
That shortage has followed the destruction of nearly 40 percent of its oil refining capacity, the pro-government Russian business daily Kommersant reported on October 1. The business publication said Moscow will now look to these allies in Asia for petrol following the Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian energy production centers. Some of those refineries have announced that production will be halted indefinitely.
The Berlin-based energy expert Thomas O’Donnell also told Newsweek that “Russia has more unhappiness to look forward to.” According to him, Ukraine is now “producing and successfully launching drones at oil facilities faster than Russia’s ability to repair them.”
The cumulative Ukrainian drone and missile strikes have severely disrupted operations at Russian refineries, which are a key source of revenue for the Kremlin’s wartime economy.
To facilitate the import of petrol from Asian suppliers, the Russian government reportedly plans to lift import duties on fuel entering through specified checkpoints in the Russian Far East. Moscow will also subsidize importers by covering the shortfalls between global market prices and lower domestic fuel prices by drawing on funding from the federal budget.
Major Russian Oil Firms’ Involvement
Rosneft, Independent Oil and Gas Company (NNK), and the state-owned Promsyrieimport will supply petrol from Asia and are reportedly planning to ship 150,000 tons per month to central Russia from Siberian oil refineries.
Moscow is also planning to boost gasoline imports from Belarus and lift a ban on monomethylaniline. This chemical is an octane-boosting additive that increases petrol production at refineries. This additive has also been banned in Russia since 2016 due to its toxicity and potential cancer risks, but is being used despite the risks in Belarus.
In a written appeal to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak warned that the risk of further deterioration in Russia’s domestic fuel supply remains, despite the Russian government’s plans to mitigate the crisis. This is reported by Kommersant, citing verbatim from the Deputy PM’s letter, which appears to have been leaked.
Ukraine’s armed forces have targeted at least 16 of Russia’s 38 oil refineries since August 2025, according to reporting in the Financial Times. These attacks have succeeded in reducing Moscow’s diesel exports to the lowest level since 2020.
Ukraine has lobbied its Western allies to impose additional sanctions on Russia’s energy sector. It has been pointed out that Moscow’s oil revenues would markedly reduce its capacity to finance the war.
US President Donald Trump has recently implored the EU to halt Russian energy imports. The US leader has also stated that the level of support from the US for the Ukraine war will be tied to the degree to which European nations can reduce their reliance on Moscow for oil and gas.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two consecutive awards for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, with a specialization in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Swamplaw Yankee
October 3, 2025 at 3:47 am
Oil – is Oil a useful barometer?
Ukraine has the cognitive ability to use a wormhole when ever it unexpectedly encounters evidence of one.
Ukraine sees that it is the sustained volume of firepower of drones/ missiles that is the vector that seems closest to quantum physics thought.
Oil is just the tangible manifestation of the gossamer, the non-concrete. tsarling Putin’s ruuzzkie ethnic tribe is suddenly entangled in the tangible of their daily existence: paying for fuel when, yes, there is no fuel. Yes, the ruuzzkie society must pay in some form but in exactly what way will evoke itself out of the other side of the wormhole.
Ukraine precipitates an industrial capability to not only create stockpiles of these projectiles ( + their munitions) , accelerate + sustain a high rate of production for an extended ( ally dependent ) time frame.
As I have created a quantifier way back, lets us one attack projectile emitted every minute per hour per 24 hours per 7 days as the base unit. that is defined here as 1X.
Is ukraine at 1X and, if so, for which projectile? Is that the projectile best suited to entangle with the russkie ethnic controlled oil infrastructure?
What ally is sharing funding of this very huge burden on Ukrainian finance? To aid in definition: who is the opponent that we hypothosize exists?
Well, the PRC CCP with its billion plus residents is the enemy with the cash reserves. That is, China funds ( covertly) the other entanglement.
The evidence shows the enemy of China, the USA, has self-chosen to wear the yellow belly and pretend it is 1939. 1939-40-41-42 is when the USA chose to wear the yellow belly internationally and pretend there was no world war + that KGB Stalin was not cuddling NAZI Hitler.
Currently, Ukraine is in the process of evolving this industrial capability to create, accelerate and sustain a high rate of production leading to a 1X definition.
However, is Ukraine really funded to evolve up to a needed 1.5X, 2X or 3X definition? At 2x definition achievement what will the ruuzzkie ethnic tribe done to its oil rate of production: lowered or heightened it?
By that time, will the PRC CCP finally change its LONG GAME with the Genocide focussed Ruuzzkie ethnics and conclude a beneficial co-existence treaty with Ukraine?
The tangible, oil (production) inside ruuzzkie controls, is only a reflection of the cognitive ability of Ukraine to manipulate its industrial capability to 2X or 3X projectile firepower. The Quantum concept of entanglement should pre-view to the Han thinkers in the CCP that their LONG GAME needs ‘immediate’ alteration to include a cognitive Ukraine, not exclusively a crazed ethnic Genocide tribe ( ruuzzkies).
The USA – What a fog of thoughtlessness. – MAGA POTUS Trump may be incapable of even a token participation in this. His MAGA elite should be advising that the depth of Ukraine’s firepower is increasing and at what rate. But, the USA is petrified of Commie RED-lines + not boots in Ukraine. However, his MAGA elite may be incapable of intervention into his gelled gestault to advise immediate funding of Ukrainian industrial capability to 3X or even 5X capacity. Trump tactlessly ( due to incapacity?) leaves the field open to Xi’s regime to be politically creative and win the NOBEL PEACE prize for returning to Ukraine 100% of all illegally stolen Ukrainian soil.
The USA MAGA POTUS is not involved in the world level solution and, anyway, had some scam con in mind to unilaterally donate as his personal cuddle gift to Genocider Putin huge FREE Ukrainian real estate acreage. The kick back clause would have come up, surfaced, later. -30-
Jim
October 3, 2025 at 4:10 pm
Finance… it comes down to that… it’s always come down to that.
That was the strategy from the beginning of this ruthless affair.
Cause a systemic economic freeze up, fracturing the Russian Democratic Consensus, the civilian economy dries up, forcing Putin to pull his forces from Ukraine, causing more dissatisfaction with Putin’s government… mass protests and folks will be talking about the Red Square Revolution… in the history books… so, it was supposed to go…
Didn’t happen, hasn’t happened…
… won’t happen.
“But I swear, it’s just around the corner, we just have to do it harder… harder… till we break them!”
Or it breaks you.
Russia is a large country… with lots of refining capacity far from the front.
They’ll adapt.
Meanwhile, Valerii Zaluzhnyi the former Ukrainian general who now serves as the Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom has made it plain:
This is a war of attrition… and Russia winning.
… and if it doesn’t stop according Zaluzhnyi, “We will burn out.”
This finance stuff is a mirage… it always drifts off the closer you get to it.
A chimeric in the minds-eye of men chasing rainbows.
It’ll never happen… get over it and end the war.