Highlighting the growing strain caused by Ukrainian attacks on its oil refineries, Russia has increased fuel imports from Belarus. At the same time, the Kremlin is reducing both fuel exports and import duties to stabilize domestic supply.
These developments follow repeated Ukrainian drone and other sabotage strikes against Russian energy refineries, storage depots, and extraction facilities. Ukraine is carrying out these strikes in order to complicate the resupply of Russia’s war machine and exert pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in more serious negotiations toward peace.
Russia is feeling the pain.
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On Wednesday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak noted that where Russia previously imposed a 5% import duty on energy imports, the Kremlin has now “zeroed this duty, so economic operators have the ability to supply gasoline, diesel fuel, oil products … if economic operators find opportunities for imports, then such an opportunity will be provided.”
Moscow’s Kommersant newspaper further reports that “the government proposed to increase the import of gasoline from Belarus. The plan is designed to support the domestic market in the face of falling production and gasoline shortages in some regions.”
Russia has also reduced gasoline exports to Central Asian states, leading to growing shortages in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
These announcements follow increasing petrol and diesel shortages across Russia, especially in more rural areas. Prices at the pump are increasing, and videos posted to social media have shown long lines forming outside gas stations. Indeed, rationing has been introduced at some stations, and the head of Russia’s national automobile association has called for price caps at the pump.
These developments demonstrate Ukraine’s growing success in what military strategists term the “deep battlespace” — operations conducted far behind enemy lines through daring, unexpected strikes designed to demoralize and destabilize an opponent in areas once thought secure. For Ukraine, this approach is crucial. Russia’s extensive missile and drone arsenal enables it to strike targets across all of Ukraine, but by proving it can retaliate in kind, hitting sensitive sites deep within Russian territory, Ukraine achieves two major strategic objectives.
First, it introduces greater friction into the Russian military’s ability to resupply its forces at the front line and plan, conduct, and accomplish large-scale operations that require major gas reserves. Second, it slowly undermines the credibility of Putin’s war effort with the Russian people. After all, where Putin presented his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine as absolutely necessary for Russia’s security, Russians are growing to realize it has brought hundreds of thousands of Russian dead and wounded, increasing economic difficulty, and, as with gasoline shortages, growing challenges to their way of life.
Putin retains significant support, as does his war effort, but Ukraine’s strategy is increasing the costs of war and the attraction of peace.
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This situation offers a clear cause for the U.S. and European nations to increase their provision to Ukraine of means to better target Russia’s energy infrastructure. While strikes on targets within Russian civilian population centers should not receive Western support, refineries and storage depots are legitimate military targets. Trump’s provision to Ukraine of Tomahawk missiles would certainly help increase the pressure on Putin in this regard. Having already risked acts of war by loading explosives onto U.S.-destined cargo planes and helping China learn how to sink American submarines, Putin’s complaints about the Tomahawks would deserve no quarter.
Coming off the back of his success in Gaza, Trump should now seize the initiative toward ending the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
