Viktoria lives in a village in Zabaikalye, close to the Chinese border. Her diabetic husband went into a coma because she could not give him a needed dose of insulin. She phoned for an ambulance, and the dispatcher told her to find her own car. “We’re out of gas,” the dispatcher said, according to her account to RFE/RL.
So she walked 15 kilometers to the next village, where a friend of her husband’s drove him in. “They revived him, but it’s still unclear how a multi-hour coma will affect his condition,” she said. “If it had been a stroke, we definitely would have lost him.”
Lines, brawls and uncollected garbage
Zabaikalye lies six time zones east of Moscow and about 6,300 kilometers from Ukraine. In its capital, Chita, the line for fuel stretched 3 kilometers. Regional authorities advised residents to limit driving in and out of the region, and the mayor set daily limits for individual drivers.
“We stand in line for 12 hours or more, filling up our 15 liters,” said Nikolai, a Chita resident. At one station north of the city, waits ran about three hours, according to a salesman named Grigory, and an argument there turned into a brawl. “Not only can you run out of fuel, you can also get beaten up,” he said. Places near the front of one queue were being sold for 800 rubles, about $10.
On June 25 a regional waste company suspended garbage collection in four districts because its trucks had no fuel. Yekaterina, who lives in Krasnokamensk near the Chinese border, said nothing had been picked up for a week. “Garbage is lying in the courtyards, rotting; there are rats, stray dogs,” she told RFE/RL. “Another month and we’ll die from the smell.” Like others interviewed, she asked to be identified by a pseudonym for security reasons.
Elsewhere the story repeats. In the Irkutsk region, standard gasoline rose nearly 10 percent in a week, a resident named Sergei said. In Khabarovsk, Governor Dmitry Demeshin reported that about 40 percent of fueling stations were dry. Residents there said they were fighting wildfires on their own. “They said they had nothing to drive them on,” said a man named Anatoly.
The national picture
As of late June, more than 55 of Russia’s 83 regions and federally designated cities reported government restrictions or shortages tied to supply problems, according to RFE/RL. At least 17 had imposed compulsory limits. Ukraine has hit more than two dozen refineries since March, among them eight of Russia’s ten largest. The Gazprom Neft refinery in Moscow’s Kapotnya district, hit twice in June, supplies roughly 40 percent of the city’s fuel.
Ukraine’s drone campaign is aimed at cutting Russia’s export earnings and its domestic fuel. President Volodymyr Zelensky told Russians waiting in fuel lines on June 29 to think about what awaits them next.
Vladimir Putin addressed the strikes on state television on June 28. “Of course, they’re creating problems, that’s obvious,” he said, adding that shortages were “not critical.” Russian forces, meanwhile, were still advancing in Ukraine at a slow pace.
Sources
- A Russian Woman’s Husband Fell Into a Coma and the Ambulance Couldn’t Come — There Was No Fuel Due to the Ukraine War
- Far From Ukraine War, Russia Fuel Crisis Consumes Local Worries
