Drone attacks ignite fuel crisis in Russia

The lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty as several months of Ukrainian attacks have set oil refineries ablaze and choked supplies for motorists across the vast country.

- By DASHA LITVINOVA

Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s major Ufa oil refinery for the second time in a week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.

Almost daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have created a fuel crisis and heaped political pressure on the Kremlin as its all-out invasion of Ukraine stretches into its fifth year.

The Ufa refinery is one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants and is located more than 600 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said on social media.

Ukraine also struck a plant producing missile components in Russia’s Penza region southeast of Moscow, some 300 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said.

Russian officials did not confirm the strikes, which could not be independently verified. The Russian Defense Ministry reported intercepting 179 Ukrainian drones over 16 Russian regions, annexed Crimea and waters of the Azov and the Black Sea.

Fuel rationing has been introduced in many Russian regions, with hours-long queues of cars snaking beside roads. Social media videos show drivers aghast at the lines or swearing at empty gas pumps and rising prices. The mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk even ordered portable toilets brought in to accommodate those in line.

The fuel crisis — unprecedented for a nation that is one of the world’s biggest energy producers — has brought Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine home to ordinary Russians like few other events in the war.

It drew a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged “problems persist for both motorists and businesses,” and “there are still queues at petrol stations, and finding the right grade of petrol isn’t always easy.”

He insisted the shortages are “not critical” and “temporary.”

But that appeared to do little to reassure at least one motorist in Moscow, typically better insulated from economic shocks than the rest of the country.