Russians Seethe Over Hours-Long Gas Lines as Putin Shrugs

John McCain once told the United States Senate: “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.” A decade later, Russia is a gas station without gas.From Moscow to Siberia, gasoline lines stretch for miles and for hours. Several are so long they have been photographed by NASA satellites. As a palliative, one governor promises to place portable toilets next to the lines.Tempers flare. Russia’s internet fills with videos of men in fist fights and women screaming words known only to connoisseurs of modern Russian obscenities. In southern Russia, Cossacks try to keep order. According to Yandex data, online searches for ‘how to siphon fuel’ rose to more than 9,300 by June 21, from 697 a month earlier. Sales of hybrid gas-electric vehicles have doubled. In Moscow, Ukrainians hacked the “Where’s The Gas?” app and fed false information to send drivers to waste hours waiting in lines stretching from empty gas stations.. In echoes of the Soviet era, ration cards are the new norm, a gasoline black market flourishes, affluent drivers pay poor ones to wait in line, and the government allows the sale of substandard gasoline. These long banned, high sulphur grades pollute and can damage modern engines. Retreating behind euphemisms, Russian officials blame the shortages on “unplanned maintenance of refineries.” Everyone knows the real reason is Ukraine’s bombing campaign. In June, Ukraine bombed 11 Russian refineries. Sailing through ineffectual air defenses, Ukraine uses ever more accurate and ever more deadly long-range drones. In the latest attack, authorities in Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg, confirmed that Ukrainian drones had struck an oil terminal in the city Friday night; news agencies said the city’s Baltic Sea port had also been hit.Last week, Russian State Duma member Nina Ostanina publicly estimated that Ukrainian drones have knocked out nearly one third of Russia’s oil refining capacity.As is his wont, President Vladimir Putin distanced himself from bad news. On the day that millions of Moscow residents could see columns of black smoke rising from their city’s sole refinery, their president was filmed meeting with Southeast Asian leaders to discuss how climate change could imperil rare tropical flowers.Five days later, he called security officials together. Speaking on national TV, he said the country faces “a certain deficit” of fuel “but not a critical one.” He announced a task force. Now, Russia, the world’s third largest oil producer, imports jet fuel from Japan, and gasoline from Belarus, India, and Kazakhstan. As reported by Reuters, the volumes sound like a lot. In reality, they barely cover the 30 million gallons that Russian drivers consume each day. Shipments from India take at least five weeks.Seeking to cow Ukraine, Mr. Putin unleashes mass drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. These blitzes largely hit civilian targets, notably high rise apartment buildings. An attack on Kyiv on Thursday left at least 30 dead, 92 wounded and dozens of apartments destroyed.In this summer’s showdown over gasoline, Mr. Putin may be the victim of his own success. When he took power, in 2000, there were 20 million cars in Russia. Now, there are 50 million. About 45 percent of Russia’s driving-age population now has a car. This politically crucial middle class has fading memories, if any, of Communist-era lines and shortages.Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, sees these legions of Russian drivers as the Kremlin’s Achilles heel. Accordingly, Mr. Zelensky launched last week a 40-day ‘influence campaign.’ Through early August, his Unmanned Systems Force is to relentlessly bomb Russian refineries, armaments factories, and trucks and trains bringing supplies to Russian troops. The goal is to force Mr. Putin — or his entourage — into serious peace talks.Conservative British commentator Lord Ashcroft wrote approvingly last week in The Kyiv Post: “How David Slays Goliath — One Refinery at a Time.”Ukraine devotes special attention to the Crimean Peninsula, the Black Sea region that Mr. Putin unilaterally annexed in 2014. Today, Ukraine methodically bombs bridges, ferries, and air bases. In this siege setting, gas sells for $12.70 a gallon, the highest price in Europe. For now, Ukraine spares Mr. Putin’s trophy, $4 billion, 12-mile Kerch Bridge. Ukraine leaves this as an escape hatch for Russians seeking to exit Crimea. One day, 2,500 cars lined up to cross. On the other side of the bridge, in the Krasnodar region, desperation for gasoline is so acute that local drivers have expelled drivers of cars with Crimean plates. In the region, at Novorossiysk, local authorities have suspended gasoline sales to individuals. The city is Russia’s largest oil exporting port on the Black Sea.While Russian strategists war game how to defend against a Ukrainian amphibious assault, Ukraine’s leaders increasingly talk as if Crimea were a symbolic sideshow, not the main stage. One Moscow driver, indignant over a gas line, captured Russia’s power equation last week, when he spluttered into his dashcam: “This is Moscow … not Crimea!”“Only the ‘Island of Moscow’ can force [Putin] to [end the war],” the Ukrainian president told reporters yesterday after touring the rubble of an apartment building in Kyiv. “All his talk about how he knows Crimea, loves it, and needs it — it’s all a lie.”His drone commander, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, has started to sign his Telegram posts: “Moscow will fall.” Hours before dispatching dozens of drones toward Russia’s capital Friday night, he mused: “What a moonlit, starry, clear night.”In his tally for the first six months of this year, Major Brovdi said the number of Russian targets hit by Ukrainian drone operators was up “a staggering 1,150 percent” over last year. Specifically, there were 2,359 “deep strike” combat missions ranging up to 1,250 miles; 3,406 “middle strike” missions; and 2,747 front-line attacks.Due to Ukraine’s mastery of military drones, Russia loses troops at an 8:1 ratio compared with Ukraine, according to a report released Wednesday by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. While the 700-mile front line is largely frozen, the Center’s analysts calculated that Ukraine regained a net 150 square miles last spring.In Russia’s tightly controlled regime, cracks are starting to appear. Since May 13, Russia’s main stock index, the MOEX, has fallen by 17 percent. Russian officials in Crimea quietly send their families to the mainland. Last week, security forces quickly arrested a war veteran who warned that soldiers could turn their guns against the Kremlin. Before the arrest of Alexander Lunin, his video was watched by an estimated 15 million Russians.More and more Russians tell pollsters they would be happy to see the war end tomorrow. In a late May telephone poll of 1,600 Russians, 81 percent of respondents said they support ending the war tomorrow, according to the Kyiv-based polling group, The Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia.For war supporters like TV host Vladimir Solovyov, Russia faces a slippery slope that could lead to peace talks. “Stop waiting for everything to end,” he ranted about the war last week on his Full Contact show. Addressing imaginary advisers to Mr. Putin, he told his national audience: “I see them saying: ‘We’re experiencing inconveniences. Now there are lines at our gas stations. We are having problems with gasoline. Why did you start all this? Let’s negotiate.”

Russians Seethe Over Hours-Long Gas Lines as Putin Shrugs

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