Ukraine fuel shortage

Where things stand

Ukraine's fuel supply has become an open question after reports that filling stations across the country are running dry. The Russian state agency TASS, citing the fuel market analyst Sergey Kuyun, said stations are running short and that a blockade of Ukraine's ports, combined with sharply higher prices for truck diesel, is deepening an export crisis. TASS did not identify who is enforcing the port blockade, and the account has not been independently confirmed. The pressure extends across the border into Moldova, where Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said Ukrainian strikes on the Russian port of Novorossiysk set off a diesel shortage at home. Moldova imports significant volumes of diesel via the Danube, which ties its supply to shipping routes now caught up in the fighting. Taken together, the two accounts describe a single squeeze working from both ends: Ukrainian attacks on Russian export infrastructure and constraints on Ukraine's own ports are draining fuel on both sides of the frontier.

Fuel logistics in the Black Sea region run through a small number of ports and river routes that the war has repeatedly disrupted. Ukraine depends on imported fuel and on its own seaports for trade, while Moldova, which is landlocked apart from a short stretch of the Danube, brings in diesel by river. Russia's port of Novorossiysk is one of the main export terminals for oil and refined products in the region, and Ukraine has struck it. Reporting on the situation inside Ukraine comes in part through Russian state media and market analysts they quote, so individual claims about shortages should be treated as contested until confirmed elsewhere.