Disgruntled motorists in Moscow have sat for hours in long gasoline station queues this week to fill their cars with limited volumes of fuel, in a second wave of a crisis due to high seasonal demand and Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries.
Shortages began to gather pace in May and had spread to most Russian regions by July, but fuel stations in Moscow were able to ease an earlier wave of restrictions in June.
Fuel rationing is not going to help the national moral.
It's not just about morale. About 50% of Russian tax revenues is spent on the invasion, much of that going out of the country to pay for weapons parts.
Right now there are Russian farmers who haven't planted their fields because those farmers couldn't get enough diesel at a price they could afford. Those fields would have paid for more missiles to attack Ukraine. Now they don't.
i thought russia was a net oil exporter...
They still are, though not as much as before as raw oil production and transportation infrastructure is also getting destroyed. But the gasoline and diesel shortages are mainly due to attacks on refineries and fuel transportation, not just a shortage of oil.
They article says they are rationaling fuel but I wonder if there is also price controls in place.
Is Diesel a "normal" price or is the price significantly higher?
Yes, Russia has price controls on gasoline and diesel. The price controls aren't as formal as in some countries. But they are there.
Separately there has developed a black market of entirely unregulated gasoline and diesel sales, with often far higher prices. This is particularly notable in parts of Russia, and Russia occupied Ukraine, where they've on occasion entirely banned the sale of fuel to ordinary people.
That's about a dollar per litre. Much higher than at least what I knew it to be a decade and a half ago - about 3-4x and also a tad higher than it was 8 weeks ago - about 5%.
globalpetrolprices dot comconfirms this too:so sad... what a ridiculous and completely unnecessary war.
I don't know how Putin sleeps at night... I have been responsible for death before and that shit haunts you.
Being responsible for deaths doesn’t affect psychopaths and world leaders are often psychopathic
No war is necessary actually.
Drone sanctions work well I see!
yet another "final" nail in the coffin
how many already were there?
but hey, if it makes you feel good for a minute...