Russia is running out of gas. Not in the metaphorical, war-fatigue sense, but literally: fuel shortages have spread across nearly all of the country’s 83 regions, with long lines forming at gas stations and rationing measures taking hold. The cause is a sustained Ukrainian drone campaign targeting Russian oil refineries, one that has quietly become one of the most economically consequential strategies of the entire conflict.
The crisis reached a new level of severity in early July 2026, when strikes hit the Omsk refinery, Russia’s largest gasoline producer. The facility sits more than 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, a distance that underscores just how far Ukraine’s drone capabilities now reach. The attacks sparked devastating fires and forced production halts at a facility that is critical to Russia’s domestic fuel supply chain.
A strategy designed to hit Russia where it hurts
Ukraine’s campaign against Russian refining infrastructure has been building for over a year. The escalation kicked into high gear in August 2025, when more than a dozen strikes targeted refineries across the country in a single month. By mid-2026, estimates suggest that somewhere between 13% and 25% of Russia’s total refining capacity had been knocked offline.
