Ukraine’s offensive against Russia causes petrol panic across Central Asia

A Russian woman explained on camera what made her and a smiling, bearded man next to her drive to a petrol station in Kazakhstan. For most of this year, swarms of Ukrainian drones have been burning down Russian oil refineries and fuel depots from annexed Crimea to the Baltic to western Siberia, causing sky-high plumes of putrid smoke. As Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to resume peace talks, claiming that his forces “advance in all directions”, tens of millions of Russians face fuel shortages and hours-long queues at petrol stations – with occasional shouting and fist fights.

And those living in regions bordering Kazakhstan – including a string of urban centres along the Volga River, Russia’s most densely populated region – drive to Central Asia’s most oil-rich nation, often hundreds of kilometres, just to fill up. Even though in late May the Kazakh government banned petrol exports, border guards report thwarting hundreds of attempts to smuggle fuel back to Russia in canisters, makeshift fuel tanks – or in giant fuel trucks. But some industrious smugglers still make their way across the world’s second-longest land border that stretches 7,644km (4,750 miles) across the barren steppe, according to people interviewed for this article.

He withheld his last name for safety reasons. Even though Kazakhstan boasts three giant, Soviet-era oil refineries, fuel prices in Kazakhstan increased by 15.6 percent this year, the UlusMedia website reported on July 10 . Only one of Kazakhstan’s neighbours, Turkmenistan, has large hydrocarbon reserves, but its autocratic leaders isolated the country from the rest of the region in the 1990s.

Other Central Asian nations feel the ripple effect too – especially Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, resource-poor, mountainous nations that used to get up to 90 percent of their petrol from Russia. Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the free trade bloc of five former Soviet nations dominated by Russia and the Kremlin’s political decisions. Tajikistan is not a member of the group, but it bought discounted Russian fuel as “payment for political loyalty, not because Putin is so kind”, Ibragimova said.

A key source of petrol for Central Asia was Russia’s largest refinery in the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia. But it stopped operating after Ukrainian drone attacks in early July that damaged a crude distillation unit. Around that time, Kyrgyzstan began regulating petrol prices and asked other ex-Soviet nations for help to “ensure sustainable fuel supplies”.

Kyrgyz experts predict long-term problems at Russian refineries will take months or even years to fix. He did not specify how long it would take. By the middle of this month, Kyrgyz authorities said they had spent about $11.4m to subsidise petrol prices.