By Ekaterina Janashia | 2026-07-03

Svetlana needed a full tank. On the morning of June 27, the 45-year-old set out across Saint Petersburg to fill her sport utility vehicle, the way she does every Saturday. Her usual station was closed. The next had run dry. A third let her buy only 20 liters -- a third of her 60-liter tank.

She spent the rest of the day chasing fuel from station to station. By the time she delivered her son's medicine to the family home outside the city, night had fallen. The war had reached her gas tank.

For Svetlana, that tank is a lifeline. Her 20-year-old son, Oleg, has severe disabilities and lives with his grandparents in the Leningrad region. He needs constant care and can never be left alone. He also depends on specific medications, a specialized diet and medical supplies that she can find only in the city. So once a week, she drives those goods to her parents' house. She is divorced, the family's only earner and the only one who drives. Moving out of Saint Petersburg is not an option.

The new 20-liter cap has upended that routine. "This new reality has turned my already difficult life into a nightmare," she told Kontur.

Workarounds at the pump

The limits have spread across Saint Petersburg. Major networks, including Teboil, Lukoil, Tatneft and Surgutneftegaz, now restrict purchases to as little as 20 to 30 liters per receipt. Officials say the caps target panic buying and hoarding.

But station workers are helping drivers beat the system. An investigative report by the outlet Fontanka found that cashiers and pump attendants openly coach customers on the fix: split the purchase into separate transactions.

At Surgutneftegaz, where a 20-liter limit applies, employees tell drivers to pay with a second card or with cash to ring up another receipt. The same plays out at Gazprom Neft and Rosneft. When one customer asked for 40 liters under a 30-liter cap, a worker offered a simple solution: "We can do 30 first, and 10 on a second receipt."

A few stations warn that they will block the pump if a driver circles back. On the ground, though, staff and customers mostly cooperate. The loophole keeps drivers satisfied and sales steady, and it leaves the official crackdown largely toothless.

Refineries knocked offline

The shortage starts well before the pump. Independent reports say recent drone strikes inflicted an unprecedented amount of damage on Russian refineries, knocking critical plants out of service. The Moscow oil refinery will stay offline until at least the end of 2026 because of the structural damage.

The fallout now reaches at least 30 regions. Some ban selling gasoline in jerry cans. Others cap liters per vehicle. In Moscow and Saint Petersburg, regional governments insist the commercial chains, not the state, imposed the caps to keep their reservoirs from running dry.

To ease the deficit, the government has lowered its own standards. On June 15, federal regulators cleared refineries to sell Euro-3 gasoline and diesel on the domestic market -- fuel with far higher sulfur content than the previous Euro-5 grade. The rollback signals how severe the supply shock has become.

The damage spills past cars. In four districts of the Zabaikalsky Krai in eastern Russia, sanitation trucks stopped collecting trash because local governments could not fuel them.

Controlling the story

The Kremlin is also fighting to control the narrative. An internal directive ordered loyal media outlets to fill broadcasts and websites with photographs of busy, line-free gas stations. The Russian messaging app Max, meanwhile, blocks regional chat groups where people share real-time tips on which stations still have fuel.

Officials keep up a calm front. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak calls the situation "complicated but under control." Behind that line, the math is grim. Russia is seeking emergency imports of 50,000 tons of gasoline from Kazakhstan. Belarus already ships between 100,000 and 150,000 tons a month, but that no longer covers a daily deficit of 25,000 tons. Moscow is now moving to subsidize fuel imports from as far away as India.

The public relations effort can no longer hide the toll from people like Svetlana. She said the mood around her is shifting.

"I was always against this so-called 'special operation.' I knew nothing good would come out of this," she said. "But even I could not imagine such hardship for ordinary citizens. Now, many of my colleagues and friends have changed their positions about the war. Because now they feel it. It gets closer every day, and I have no idea what to expect next."