Putin had to ban all fuel export after what just happened to Russia

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Today, the biggest news comes from the Russian Federation.

[00:00:03]Here, Ukrainian strikes have forced Russia's major oil refineries to shut down, bringing fuel production to a halt, and pushed the Kremlin to urgently stop all fuel exports.

[00:00:14]This marks a mission accomplished moment in Ukraine's refinery campaign, as the effects of those strikes are now crippling the wider Russian fuel system.

[00:00:24]Several of Russia's major oil refineries in central regions have now halted operations or sharply cut output after recent successful Ukrainian attacks on critical processing infrastructure.

[00:00:36]These are key plans that turn crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel. So once they stop, Russia loses fuel output at the source. Several major refineries were knocked offline within the same stretch of attacks, leaving the rest of the network with less room to cover the missing output.

[00:00:54]Production-wise, the effect is now visible across a large share of Russia's refining system. Rezen alone lost roughly 90 to 100% of its processing capacity after the May 15th strike.

[00:01:07]While the latest damage at Yeros level was estimated to affect units covering about 80 to 100% of plant processing volume. Perm was also forced into a full halt after three primary crude processing units were emergencies stopped. Once losses of that scale appear across several major refineries at the same time, Russia is no longer dealing with isolated damage. But with a major reduction in the refining capacity, still available to balance fuel supply. With refining output falling across the system, the pressure soon moved into exports and forced Moscow into a longerterm tradeoff.

[00:01:44]Russia imposed its gasoline export ban on April 1st and will continue to keep it in place till the end of July. So the restrictions had already been running for nearly 2 months when the latest refinary losses hit. With the gasoline ban in place in April, Russian oil product exports fell by about 340,000 barrels per day from March to 2.2 million barrels per day. Ukraine achieved this through a sustained strike campaign against the refinery units that matter most for fuel production. In the first 20 days of May alone, 10 major Russian oil sites were hit and six were forced to hold operations.

[00:02:22]The campaign became effective because Ukraine kept returning to damaged facilities before repairs could restore output while also striking the processing sections Russia finds hardest to replace quickly. Perm shows this clearly because the refinery had already been hit five times by May 8th, including three strikes in one week before another attack followed on May 12th that put the refinery out of action. That sequence prevented repairs from stabilizing the site and eventually put a hold to fuel processing.

[00:02:54]The same method appeared in Yarosville and Rien where repeated strikes deepened earlier damage instead of allowing recovery.

[00:03:02]Yos level was hit three times in May while Ryzen was struck on May 15th in one of the most damaging attacks of the campaign. Kustavo and Cizaran were also hit again adding fresh disruption at major processing sites in Nishnov Gorat and Samur regions. Kirishi Primorsk and several pumping stations were struck as well which reduced the oil flow reaching the refineries that were still operating. that left the remaining plants processing less crude oil while covering more of the systems needs, which made delays and bottlenecks harder to avoid. Overall, Ukraine's refinery campaign is now forcing Russia to spend more resources protecting fuel infrastructure and restoring damaged plants far behind the front. This pulls air defenses and repair capacity into the energy sector where repeated strikes keep undoing early recovery work and slowing stabilization.

[00:03:56]As refinery outages continue, fuel distribution becomes harder to manage, increasing pressure on military supply planning across the war effort. Russia now faces a deeper logistical vulnerability inside its own rear because every new disruption widens the gap between fuel demand and refining capacity.

[00:04:15]If you would like to explore other key developments today that we couldn't cover in this video, make sure to visit our interactive news map. The link to our interactive map is in the description below. Thank you for watching this update and a special thanks to everyone already following our interactive map.