How severe is Russia’s energy shortage because of Ukrainian strikes?

Analysts say Russia’s fuel crisis may affect its domestic economy, but the war in Ukraine will remain the Kremlin’s priority.

Ukrainian drone attacks on energy infrastructure are intensifying fuel shortages in Russia, triggering a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin of the gravity of the situation.

In unusually candid public remarks to a meeting of senior officials on Sunday, Putin explicitly acknowledged that Ukrainian strikes had led to fuel rationing.

“You are well aware that problems for ⁠drivers and for businesses persist,” he said, according to Russian news agencies. “Unfortunately, there are still queues at petrol stations too.”

“We have to reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure,” he said, adding that the situation required “systemic measures that match the scale of current challenges”.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities in recent months, hitting Russia’s crude oil and refined products sales, its main source of export income and the main source of funding for its war efforts.

Norsi, Russia’s fourth-largest oil refinery and the second-largest producer of petrol, suspended operations last week following a Ukrainian drone attack. The facility is located near Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of Moscow.

Ukraine’s military said it also struck Russia’s Orenburg gas processing plant, which has a capacity of 45 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. It is located in the southern Urals near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, more than 1,200km (750 miles) beyond the front lines in Ukraine

Last week, Ukraine also used long-range drones to hit two oil facilities in Kerch in Crimea and the port of Kavkaz, used to bring fuel to the Russian front lines.

Long-range drones also hit the Slavyansk and the Yaroslavl oil refineries, about 300 and 700 kilometres (190 and 435 miles) from the front line, respectively. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in the aftermath of the attack on Sunday that this meant “fewer resources serving Russia’s war machine”.

“We continue our operations that weaken Russia’s ability to wage this war,” he wrote on X.

Ukraine has been targeting Russia’s oil refineries, oil storage sites, oil and gas pumping stations and oil loading ports with strikes in that order of priority, according to Indra Overland, who heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)’s Center for Energy Research and is Associate Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

“At the refineries, the Ukrai