The American Institute for the Study of War has come to the conclusion that the Kremlin is forced to seek help from Kazakhstan due to powerful strikes by Ukrainian drones on Russian refineries.
Russia no longer knows where to find gasoline for the war against Ukraine
The ISW team draws attention to the fact that Ukraine's regular and highly successful attacks on Russia's oil refineries have indeed had a tangible effect and have caused considerable damage to the enemy.
Everything is so serious that Putin's team began actively negotiating with its allies regarding the supply of gasoline.
According to Reuters, Moscow has asked Kazakhstan to create an "emergency reserve" of 100,000 metric tons of gasoline.
You can learn more about the situation in Kazakhstan from a new interview with Online.UA:
Another anonymous source claims that Kazakhstan and Russia have already reached an agreement allowing the Russian Federation to use Kazakhstan's gasoline reserves. However, the volume of these stocks was not possible to determine.
Interestingly, Shingys Ilyasov, adviser to the Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan, currently denies similar requests from official Moscow.
What is known about the consequences of Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries
As Reuters was able to find out, almost daily attacks by Ukrainian drones caused the shutdown of about 14% of the total oil refining capacity in Russia.
In addition, it became known that Russia significantly increased the import of gasoline from Belarus as a result.
According to the latest data, the Russian Federation imported 3,000 metric tons of gasoline from Belarus in the first half of March.
Russia's recent attempts to import gasoline from Belarus and Kazakhstan indicate that Russia is likely increasingly concerned about immediate supplies of distillate petroleum products to the domestic market following Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries, the Institute for the Study of War said.
