Overview
- Ukraine carried out a concentrated campaign of long‑range drone attacks in August that Kyiv says struck 12 large refineries and at least 21 targets across Russia.
- Russian crude processing fell to roughly 3.8 million barrels per day after the August strikes, a level not seen in about twenty years and one that cut refinery output sharply.
- Gasoline production fell nearly 20 percent and diesel output more than 23 percent year‑on‑year in early August, producing long lines at pumps and prompting Moscow to introduce rationing and stop some fuel exports.
- Moscow signed a deal to process crude at Kazakhstan’s small Kondensat refinery and take back about 70 percent of its output, but Kondensat’s annual capacity is tiny compared with Russia’s daily fuel needs and experts say it will not meaningfully close the shortfall.
- Repair work is slowed by Western sanctions that limit access to specialized parts and by repeated strikes that reset outage timetables, a dynamic that keeps Russian supplies constrained and raises the risk of higher global energy prices and sanction‑avoidance fuel flows.