KRASNOKAMENSK, Russia, June 30 — A line of drivers desperate to fill their car tanks stretched three kilometers long in the capital of the Siberian region of Zabaikalye, some 6,300 kilometers from Ukraine. In certain Zabaikalye districts, municipal garbage collection has been suspended because there is no fuel for the trucks. In another Siberian location, local villagers are fighting wildfires on their own because firefighters have no gasoline for their fire trucks.
One woman said that when her diabetic husband fell into a coma and she called for an ambulance, the dispatcher told her to find her own transport because the ambulance was out of fuel. Far from Ukraine’s battlefields, where Russian forces are still grinding forward at a glacial pace, a mounting fuel crisis prompted by a targeted Ukrainian drone campaign is seeping into the lives of average Russians.
In Moscow, the fuel crisis has already hit home. As Russia’s center of gravity, the city has outsized resonance, and gas shortages and public complaints are directly in the line of sight for Kremlin bureaucrats, business leaders, military officers, and top decision-makers. But the effect is no less meaningful in the far-flung hinterlands, where average people are also grumbling and suffering.
For Ukraine, that is the goal. “They haven’t actually picked up [the garbage] for a week now.
Garbage is lying in the courtyards, rotting; there are rats, stray dogs. How long is this temporary situation supposed to last?” Yekaterina, a resident of Krasnokamensk, a small town located not far from the border with China, told RFE/RL by private message. “Another month and we’ll die from the smell.” Like others interviewed for this article, Yekaterina asked to be identified by a pseudonym for security purposes.
The crisis has caught the concern at the Kremlin level, according to the record. The shortages are now directly visible to the bureaucrats, business leaders, military officers, and top decision-makers who live and work in Moscow. The strategic context is clear: a Ukrainian drone campaign targeting Russian fuel infrastructure is achieving effects far beyond the front lines, reaching deep into Siberia and into the daily lives of ordinary Russians.
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