# Ukrainian drones have hollowed out Russia's refineries, and now the oil giant is queuing to buy petrol from abroad

> Relentless Ukrainian drone strikes have cut Russia's refining capacity by 42.7%, triggering long queues and purchase limits at petrol stations. For the first time in decades, one of the world's biggest oil exporters is being forced to import fuel.

**Type:** article · **Category:** Investigations · **Published:** 2026-07-05 · **Source:** TrendKia
**Canonical:** https://trendkia.com/en/investigations/ukraine-ke-drona-hamalon-ne-russia-men-petrola-ki-killata-khari-kara-di-dusare-deshon-se-indhana-mngane-ko-majabura-moscow-5030 · **Language:** English
**Tags:** Russia fuel crisis, Ukraine drone attacks, Russia refinery, petrol shortage, Russia Ukraine war, Nayara Energy, fuel imports

For years Russia has shipped crude oil to buyers on almost every continent, so the idea of the country running short of petrol at home sounds almost impossible. Yet that is exactly what is happening. One of the world's largest oil exporters has been forced to start buying finished fuel from other nations, and some of those cargoes are said to have set sail from India. Across large parts of Russia, drivers are now queuing for hours outside filling stations, and officials have placed firm limits on how much petrol anyone can buy at once. Behind this sudden squeeze lies a single, relentless cause: Ukraine's campaign of strikes on Russia's oil industry.

Three questions sit at the heart of this story. How did a nation swimming in crude end up rationing petrol? Is India really funnelling fuel to Russia? And why has a military as large as Russia's been unable to shut down the attacks? Here is a clear breakdown of each.

## How an oil giant ran short of its own fuel
Ever since the war with Ukraine began, Kyiv has kept Russia's energy backbone in its crosshairs. From March 2026 onward, Ukrainian forces have launched more than 50 separate attacks on Russian oil refineries, steadily chipping away at the country's ability to turn crude into usable fuel.

On 4 July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his forces had sent a drone slamming into a refinery in St Petersburg, a site sitting roughly 850 km inside Russian territory. That plant alone churns out 1.25 crore tonnes of petroleum products every year, and it had already been hit once before, on 3 June. A separate refinery on the edge of Moscow was struck on 18 June.

The scale of the damage is striking. Ukrainian media accounts indicate that eight of Russia's ten biggest refineries have now been hit. The cumulative effect on fuel supply has been severe. Russia's refining capacity has dropped by 42.7%, and around 60 oil storage sites have taken heavy damage. Those depots were holding 58% of the country's refined products, petrol and diesel included, along with 42% of its crude oil.

The production numbers tell the same story. Russia's overall oil output this year is running 25% below where it stood in June a year earlier. Petrol output specifically has slipped from 10 lakh barrels a day last June to about 8.5 lakh barrels a day now, a drop of 17%. Since August 2025 the losses have piled up to somewhere near ₹1.16 lakh crore. Curbs on selling petrol and diesel are now in place across more than 55 of Russia's 83 regions.

So far the state-owned oil firms have held their pump prices steady, but privately run stations have already started charging more. And the pain is not confined to the areas that were bombed. Even regions whose refineries remain untouched are feeling the pinch as the national supply chain tightens.

Omsk offers a telling example. It is home to Siberia's biggest refinery and has not been targeted at all, yet drivers there are still capped at 40 litres of petrol per visit. In Zabaykalsky Krai, a waste collection firm has halted its work outright for lack of fuel, and bus routes have been trimmed back. In the city of Irkutsk, the shortage has driven up the cost of public transport, and the queues outside petrol pumps grew so long that portable toilets had to be set up for the drivers stuck waiting.

## Is India quietly bailing Russia out?
On 1 July, Indian oil company Nayara Energy is said to have dispatched two petrol tankers to Russia, together carrying roughly 60,000 metric tonnes of fuel. Russia's state oil company Rosneft holds a 49% stake in Nayara Energy, which lends the shipment a certain logic, though Nayara itself has not confirmed that it happened.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has acknowledged that Russia is gearing up to import fuel for the first time in decades and is holding talks with several countries to make that happen. India, however, has pushed back on any suggestion that it is directly supplying Moscow. India's Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri put it plainly: _"Neither the Indian government nor private Indian companies are directly supplying fuel to Russia. It is possible that Russia is buying fuel of Indian origin through international traders."_

That distinction matters. Rather than dealing straight with an oil company, a buyer can go through international traders instead. These middlemen gather fuel from a range of countries, ship it to big trading hubs such as Singapore, Fujairah in the UAE and Rotterdam, blend cargoes together where needed, and then sell the mixed product on to customers like Russia. Fuel that originally came from India can therefore end up in Russian tanks without India ever selling it to Moscow directly.

## The other moves Russia is making to keep the pumps running
Importing petrol is only part of the response. Russia is now bringing in roughly 4 lakh tonnes of petrol every month from a mix of countries. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has said that neighbouring Belarus alone is sending 1 to 1.5 lakh metric tonnes of petrol each month.

The Belarus figures have climbed sharply. In the first half of May, Russia pulled in 70,000 tonnes of fuel from Belarus, three times the earlier level. It has also struck a deal to buy 50,000 tonnes from Kazakhstan across July and August, and another 2 lakh barrels of jet fuel from Japan is expected to land as well.

### Squeezing exports and home sales
The second lever is holding fuel back. Russia started tightening its exports of marine and jet fuel back in November 2025. Since then those exports have collapsed from 30,000 barrels a day in 2025 to just 13,000 barrels a day this year. A ban on petrol exports has been running from 1 April to 31 July. In many regions drivers can pick up only 20 to 30 litres in a single visit, and hauling fuel away in cans has been banned outright. President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow is also weighing a ban on diesel exports.

At the same time, the rules on selling lower-grade fuel have been loosened, a deliberate move to stop stockpiles sitting idle at refineries and spoiling. Putin has tried to play down the strain, saying: _"The attacks on refineries have caused fuel shortages, but the situation is not serious. Petrol reserves are only 4% lower than last year."_

## How long can Russia hold out?
Chris Weafer, chief executive of the business consultancy Macro-Advisory, argues that Russia is not actually short of fuel overall, it just has the fuel in the wrong places. _"The problem is getting fuel to areas facing shortages. That is a major logistics operation and could take several weeks,"_ he says.

Fixing the damaged refineries is a slower and harder job. Many of the machines and spare parts needed for repairs have to be brought in from abroad, and Russia is still boxed in by international trade restrictions that make sourcing them difficult. By Weafer's reckoning, repairs to the Moscow refinery alone will take at least three months, and that single plant supplies close to 40% of the fuel used in Moscow and the surrounding regions.

Oil market analyst Gary Peach adds that even the refineries that do get patched up are unlikely to run at full tilt any time soon, simply because of how badly they were hit. He does not expect full refining operations to resume before August. Peach also makes a sharper point: there is little sense in rushing to rebuild many of these plants until there is a ceasefire or a peace deal, because a repaired refinery is just another target waiting to be struck again. Weafer, for his part, thinks the shortages could drag on into September even if the attacks stop altogether, because fuel demand climbs during the farming season.

## Why Russia can't shut down the drones
The war is now grinding through its fifth year, and Ukraine has leaned heavily on long-range drones to reach Russia's refineries. Russia's failure to swat these aircraft out of the sky comes down to three main problems.

### 1. The drones are built to slip through
Ukraine's FP-1 drone, made by Fire Point, can fly more than 1,900 km. It has been used for deep strikes reaching Moscow and the Tyumen refinery out in Siberia. Ukraine also fields other long-range attack drones, among them the Morok and the Bars. The FP-1 leans on Starlink connectivity rather than depending on satellite navigation alone, which lets operators steer it right up to the final moment of a mission and makes it far tougher to knock down. On top of that, Ukraine is using AI-assisted drone technology, developed with help from US companies, to spot holes in Russian radar and air defence coverage and to plot safer routes through them.

### 2. Shooting down cheap drones is ruinously expensive
Russia's air defences lean on systems like the S-300, S-400 and S-500, which were built to bring down fast fighter jets, ballistic missiles and other high-flying threats. Ukrainian drones do the opposite of what those systems expect: they crawl along at around 150 km/h and can hug the ground at just 50 metres up, which makes them very hard to spot and hit. Ukraine has also been turning its drones against Russia's air defence systems themselves, blunting their early-warning ability.

The economics are brutal. An FP-1 drone costs about ₹47 lakh, and by April this year Ukraine was building nearly three times as many drones as it had before. To bring one down, Russia often fires an interceptor from a Tor, Pantsir or S-400 system, each of which costs several crore rupees, so the defence ends up costing far more than the attack it is trying to stop. Western sanctions have made this worse by choking off Russia's supply of the advanced electronic components it would need to build new anti-drone systems.

### 3. Being the biggest country works against it
Russia's sheer size, usually a strength, has become a liability that Ukraine is happy to exploit. Russia simply does not have enough air defence launchers to shield every refinery, fuel depot and airbase spread across its territory. It is the largest country on Earth, sprawling across roughly 1.7 crore sq km, more than 11% of the planet's land. Guarding all of it at once is close to impossible. President Vladimir Putin has struck a confident note despite it all, saying: _"We have strengthened our air defence system, and repairs to the damaged refineries will also be completed soon."_

## What this means for you
- **Fuel prices:** A sustained cut in Russian refining and exports tightens global fuel supply, which can nudge petrol, diesel and jet fuel prices higher for consumers and airlines worldwide.
- **For India:** India has denied directly supplying fuel to Russia, but Indian-origin fuel moving through international traders could draw fresh scrutiny on companies like Nayara Energy, in which Rosneft holds a 49% stake.
- **For travellers:** Inside Russia, rationing of 20 to 40 litres per visit, costlier public transport and reduced bus services are already disrupting daily travel.

## Questions & Answers

### 1. Why has Russia run short of petrol?
Repeated Ukrainian drone strikes have hit Russian refineries, cutting refining capacity by 42.7% and badly disrupting fuel supply.

### 2. How many attacks have there been since March 2026?
Ukraine has launched more than 50 attacks on Russian oil refineries and struck eight of the country's ten biggest refineries.

### 3. Is India selling petrol to Russia?
India's government has denied any direct supply; Minister Hardeep Singh Puri says Russia may be buying Indian-origin fuel through international traders.

### 4. Which countries is Russia importing fuel from?
Russia is importing around 4 lakh tonnes of petrol a month, with supplies coming from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Japan.

### 5. How long could the shortage last?
Analysts say it could stretch into September even if the attacks stop, and repairs to the Moscow refinery alone will take at least three months.

### 6. Why can't Russia stop the drone attacks?
Cheap, low-flying long-range drones like the FP-1 are hard and hugely expensive to stop with costly air defence systems, and Russia's vast size leaves too many sites unprotected.

### 7. How much does an FP-1 drone cost and how far can it fly?
An FP-1 drone costs about ₹47 lakh and can fly more than 1,900 km.

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