How severe is Russia’s gasoline crisis? Meduza sized it up using exchange trading data.

One plant on the official list has already closed: NPK Kataliz in Angarsk, which the Energy Ministry still lists as commissioned but which Russia’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities records as liquidated. For several small facilities — NP Nafta LLC in Angarsk, Krona LLC in the Ulyanovsk region, and Tatneft’s Kichuyskaya industrial base in Tatarstan — no public data exist on processing volumes or fuel shipments. Meduza therefore based its assessment on the 35 refineries for which sufficient open-source information is available.

Their combined design capacity — the theoretical maximum they can process — is about 302 million tons of oil per year. In practice, according to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who oversees the fuel sector, Russia’s refineries processed 266.5 million tons of oil in 2024, producing 41.1 million tons of gasoline and 81.6 million tons of diesel. In December 2025, Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said refining volumes for the year were expected to remain roughly at the previous year’s level.

The official estimate of domestic demand is about 36 million tons of gasoline and 51 million tons of diesel per year. Gasoline production in Russia is thus almost entirely tied to the domestic market, while diesel carries a large export surplus: after meeting domestic demand, a significant share of output goes abroad. On July 8, the authorities banned diesel exports.

How do refineries sell gasoline? Does it go straight to gas stations?

Fuel leaves the refineries through more than one channel.

Most of the market is controlled by vertically integrated oil companies — groups that combine oil production, refining, logistics, and wholesale operations, and most often their own networks of gas stations. These include private companies such as Lukoil, Surgutneftegas, and RussNeft, as well as state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.

Another portion is sold under direct contracts to large consumers — construction companies, airports, and agricultural operations, for example.

In addition, a fixed portion of fuel must be listed on the St. Petersburg exchange (SPIMEX). Until July 2026, large producers, such as the vertically integrated oil companies, were required to sell at least 15% of their gasoline and 16% of their diesel there; amid the current crisis, the gasoline mandate was lowered to 10%.

For gas stations independent of the major networks and companies, the exchange is especially important — in practice, it is the only place they can buy fuel to resell. According to data from OMT-Konsalt, Russia had about 27,800 gas stations at the start of 2026, roughly 65% of them independent. Together, they account for about 30–40% of the market.

Another category of exchange buyers comprises oil depots, small wholesalers, and traders, who purchase fuel for resale to independent gas stations and industrial clients such as utilities and logistics companies.

The decision to lower the mandatory share of gasoline sold on the exchange from 15% to 10% therefore looks double-edged. In theory, the government is trying to stabilize the market — large producers will indeed be able to route more fuel directly to their own gas stations. But for the exchange, and by extension for independent gas stations and other buyers, the pool of available fuel will shrink even further.

How have Ukrainian strikes affected oil refining in Russia?

Ukraine’s armed forces are striking Russia’s fuel system as a whole. From January 1 through July 2, 2026, Meduza found at least 66 reports in open sources of attacks on fuel and energy infrastructure — not only refineries but also oil depots, terminals, and other facilities. The main target, however, has been the refineries themselves: 44 of the 66 attacks.

The strikes are growing more frequent.

In January and February 2026, they were isolated episodes — Ukraine struck the Afipsky, Volgograd, Ukhta, and Ilsky refineries. By March, drone strikes were forcing shutdowns at major plants: on March 21, the Saratov refinery temporarily halted operations, and just days later, on March 26, so did Kinef in Kirishi, in the Leningrad region, one of the country’s largest refineries; it still is not operating at full capacity, following a subsequent strike.

In April, Ukraine struck across the entire refining chain, from plants to port logistics. Early in the month, Norsi in Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod region), one of Lukoil’s largest refineries in European Russia, was hit. In mid-April, an attack on port infrastructure in Tuapse forced the local refinery to shut down. Around the same time, two Rosneft refineries in the Samara region — the Syzran and Novokuybyshevsk plants — were also struck. At the end of the month, Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez was hit: reports first described a fire at a primary processing unit, and a few days later the plant shut down completely.

Strikes grew even more frequent in May. Mid-month, the Ryazan refinery suspended processing after a strike; then the Moscow refinery in Kapotnya — the most important plant supplying the capital region — was hit. On May 20, Ukraine’s General Staff again reported a strike on Norsi in Kstovo, saying a primary processing unit had been damaged. The following day, the Syzran refinery halted processing entirely. At the end of the month, the Volgograd and Saratov refineries also shut down.

The strikes peaked — at least so far — in June. The Moscow refinery was hit multiple times, and after the mid-month strikes it was reported that the plant may not resume operations until at least the end of 2026.

Ukrainian drones also struck:

• Taneco and TAIF-NK in Nizhnekamsk;
• Slavneft-Yaroslavnefteorgsintez in the Yaroslavl region;
• the Kuybyshev refinery in Samara;
• several plants in the Bashneft group — Novoil, Ufaneftekhim, and possibly UNPZ;
• the Slavyansk Eko and Ilsky refineries in Krasnodar Krai.

After the June 24 strike, Norsi in Kstovo ceased operations; on July 2, Ukraine’s General Staff reported a new strike on the same plant.

On July 6, Ukrainian drones struck the Omsk refinery — Russia’s largest, located more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) from the front line — for the first time. The strike may have hit ELOU-AVT-11, one of the refinery’s key units: it is designed to process 8.4 million tons of oil and 1.2 million tons of gas condensate per year — about 41% of the plant’s capacity. A second major primary processing unit, AVT-10, was also reportedly damaged in the strike and has a capacity of 8.6 million tons of feedstock per year.

Krasnodar Krai, Bashkortostan, and the Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Samara regions recorded the most strikes in 2026. That is no coincidence: European Russia is home to the large refineries that supply densely populated regions, industrial centers, Moscow, and the country’s south. According to Meduza’s reporting, by early July, every single one of Russia’s largest refineries had been struck. The last to be hit — in the first week of July — was the Omsk refinery.

More important than the strikes themselves, however, are their consequences. When a primary processing unit — an AVT — is damaged, a refinery may sharply reduce or completely halt its intake of crude oil. At smaller refineries, a single such unit can effectively be the heart of the plant, as happened at the Saratov plant when it was struck.

Larger facilities have multiple units, but losing even one can sometimes cause a significant drop in processing volumes. Reports on the strike against the Moscow refinery described damage to AVT-6, which accounts for more than half the plant’s capacity, while reports on the Taneco strike described the shutdown of both primary processing units.

Ukraine’s armed forces have also regularly carried out repeat strikes — particularly damaging ones — against the same facilities. That has been the case with the Moscow refinery, Norsi in Kstovo, and the Syzran refinery.

Even a planned overhaul, prepared in advance, takes weeks or months. After a strike, the scope of repairs is naturally less predictable. In the best case, the downtime lasts a matter of days; if a primary processing unit or a complex secondary unit is knocked out, it can stretch into months. In Russia’s case, repairs are further complicated because some specialized equipment is imported. The Associated Press reported that, because of sanctions, the search for spare parts and workarounds has made restoring the plants even more expensive and time-consuming.

Information on how seriously the processing units at Russian refineries have been damaged is scarce; officials prefer to keep quiet. In its own tally, Novaya Gazeta Europe estimates that as of mid-June, roughly 40% of Russia’s refining capacity may already have been offline.

In the absence of detailed information, exchange trading data offer an indirect way to gauge how much fuel is falling out of the market. The data cannot show how much gasoline a given refinery produced, but they can show something else: whether buyers had access to less fuel — including fuel produced at a specific plant.

Meduza examined SPIMEX trading data from January through early July 2026 — 118 trading days and 65,700 transactions in all. To gauge how far volumes and prices had deviated from normal levels, Meduza separately collected exchange bulletins for the same period in 2025 and compared the figures month by month.

At the level of the exchange as a whole, the picture tracks closely with the chronology of the strikes. From January through March 2026, average daily sales of gasoline and diesel combined held in the range of roughly 118,000–150,000 tons. In April, as strikes began hitting major refineries in European Russia more often, the figure dropped to 104,000 tons per day. In May, it hovered around 106,000 tons, and in June, when the strikes peaked, it fell to 80,300 tons per day.

For comparison: industry sources cited by Reuters estimated summer gasoline consumption in Russia at no less than 110,000 tons per day, while gasoline production in June, according to the same sources, fell to around 90,000 tons per day.

The chart below also shows that by June 2026, trading volumes had fallen to 53% of their January level, while prices had risen to 146%.

The authorities’ decision to cut the mandatory exchange quota from 15% to 10% does not explain this decline: it took effect only on July 1, by which point fuel volumes on the market had already fallen sharply.

The year-on-year picture is just as revealing: the average daily trading volume for gasoline and diesel is 38% below June 2025 levels, and the weighted average price is 37% higher.

For several major refineries, the data also allow a closer look at specific delivery bases, not just the overall charts. A delivery base is the point from which fuel is shipped to the buyer — the refinery itself, a nearby rail station, or an oil depot. To measure the drop, Meduza compared average daily exchange sales of gasoline and diesel over the 20 trading days before each strike with sales on the available trading days afterward.

The sharpest collapse is visible at the Moscow refinery. Before the June 16–18 strikes, sales from its delivery bases averaged about 4,400 tons of gasoline and diesel per day. After the strikes, the figure was about 400 tons per day — one-tenth as much.

At Taneco — Tatneft’s large complex in Nizhnekamsk — sales from the plant’s delivery bases fell by roughly 56% after the June 12 strike, while the average exchange price of fuel from those bases rose by more than 50%.

A similar picture emerged at Norsi, Lukoil’s Nizhny Novgorod refinery in Kstovo. On the exchange, it is represented through the Kstovo/Zeletsino delivery bases (Zeletsino is a rail station near Kstovo through which petroleum products can be shipped). After the June 24 strike, sales from those bases fell by roughly 63%.

At Kinef — Kirishinefteorgsintez, Surgutneftegas’s large refinery in Kirishi, in the Leningrad region — sales from the plant’s delivery bases after the May strike were roughly 80% below their level over the 20 trading days before the attack. And at the Samara group of refineries — Rosneft’s Kuybyshev, Novokuybyshevsk, and Syzran plants — gasoline and diesel sales were roughly 65% lower after the June strike than before it.

Under normal circumstances, a drop in supply from one refinery can be offset by deliveries from other plants, by stockpiles, or by export volumes redirected to the domestic market. But when strikes come in waves and hit several large refineries at once, compensating for the lost volumes becomes harder. That is why May and June show two processes at once: part of the supply vanishes from the exchange, and the fuel that remains gets more expensive.

Amid the shortage, Russia has begun importing gasoline. Reuters reported that at least 60,000 tons of gasoline were sent to Russia from India, a country Russia supplies with oil, and that Moscow plans to import roughly 400,000 tons monthly in total.

The restrictions, however, have not let up. In its fuel-crisis chronicle, Meduza tracked how gasoline sales restrictions spread across the regions almost in lockstep with June’s collapse in production and exchange volumes. The restrictions — imposed region-wide in some places and at individual gas station chains in others — now cover virtually the entire country. The charts below show how they followed the Ukrainian strikes.

According to Reuters data, gasoline shipments from Belarus to Russia reached a record high in June — 141,000 tons in the first 25 days of the month, 2.4 times the total for all of May. Yet the fuel crisis has so far proved impossible to resolve: the shortage is being felt ever more acutely, prices keep climbing, and Russians are waiting in enormous lines for gasoline. In one particularly stark (if by now unsurprising) case, a man in Chita spent 39 hours in line to fill his tank.

At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.

If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].

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