Fuel Shortages and Rationing Spread Across Russia and Crimea Fuel is suddenly scarce in the country that sells oil to the world. From Crimea’s beaches to Moscow’s bedroom suburbs, Russians are discovering that being an energy superpower doesn’t guarantee a full tank.

In annexed Crimea, the crisis is naked and chaotic. Long before summer tourists could crowd the shoreline, “a multi-kilometer traffic jam” jammed the Crimean Bridge toward Kuban as hundreds of cars tried to escape a peninsula running on fumes. On the ground, gasoline is now “sold by coupons only in Crimea,” with popular A-95 reserved and tightly controlled, AI-92 capped at 20 liters per car, and canisters outright banned. Local outlets describe a region where “fuel is sold by coupons in the peninsula” for the second time in a year as residents scramble through yet another “gasoline crisis.”

Opposition-leaning reporting ties the collapse directly to Ukraine’s war strategy. One investigation bluntly frames it as: “Fuel crisis hits Crimea. How the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to stop fuel supplies to the peninsula and create a shortage?” Drone attacks on the Novorossiya land corridor and on Russian refineries have turned Crimea’s logistics into a slow-motion chokehold, with queues at stations and a flourishing black market.

For ordinary people, the geopolitics reduces to panic and pleading. Tourists arriving by car now find themselves trapped: “Tourists are stranded in Crimea due to a fuel crisis, authorities promise to introduce ‘identification’ for them,” one outlet notes, quoting visitors who insist, “I just want to leave here.”

But the shortages are no longer a Crimean problem. Capital and big-city residents are now tasting rationing once dismissed as a frontier headache. “Gasoline sales [were] restricted in Moscow and St. Petersburg,” with private networks and giants like Lukoil, Gazprom and others imposing per-person caps in response to the “current market situation.” Nationwide, “restrictions on gasoline sales [have been] introduced in at least 15 regions of Russia,” spreading from border areas to deep inside the country.

Even St. Petersburg, hosting the glossy International Economic Forum, can’t hide the cracks: “Gas stations in Russia’s St. Petersburg region begin rationing fuel sales,” some limiting buyers to 50 liters per transaction or serving only loyalty-card holders after drone-hit refineries like Kinef went offline.

The contrast is stark. Ukrainian drones target infrastructure; Russian officials talk of “logistics” and “market conditions.” On the roads, drivers don’t care whose narrative wins — only whose pump still works.