On the streets of Moscow, disgruntled drivers wait patiently for gasoline in a long line of cars and trucks amid an acute national shortage. Many have spent the entire day, they tell CNN, driving around in search of fuel — extraordinary in the capital of one of the world’s biggest energy producers and unexpected in a city that has long been kept insulated from the effects of the Ukraine war .
But now, for the first time in a conflict that is in its fifth year, the stark reality of what the Kremlin still insists on calling a “special military operation” has become impossible for ordinary Russians to comfortably ignore.
In the past month, Ukraine’s unprecedented drone campaign has been extraordinary in scale and impact.
On a single night last week, Russia reported intercepting 660 drones across 12 regions — one of the largest Ukrainian attacks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
The targets, far from random, are carefully selected: refineries, oil terminals, naval vessels, weapons plants deep inside Russian territory. It is a campaign designed to bleed the Russian war economy, raising the economic and political costs to the Kremlin of further prosecuting its war.
And it is working.
Across Russia, independent media outlets have been documenting growing lines of vehicles waiting at fuel stations as shortages kick in — scenes the authorities would prefer to hide. In Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, fuel sales were suspended as the peninsula was placed under a state of emergency.
Even for the Kremlin, which often plays down painful setbacks , the stark reality has become hard to sidestep.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired an emergency meeting at the weekend and disclosed that national gasoline reserves have been drawn down to uncomfortable levels.
“You are well aware that problems for drivers and for businesses persist,” Putin told assembled senior officials, acknowledging what authorities have been playing down for weeks.
“Unfortunately, there are still queues at gas stations, too,” he added.
Russians are feeling the pressure at the pump as Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries trigger fuel shortages across the country, including in the capital, Moscow. CNN's Zahra Ullah reports from outside a gas station in Moscow.
Drivers in Moscow scramble for gas as Ukrainian drone attacks impact fuel supply
There were other indications that the Kremlin is feeling some pressure. Putin revealed that a complete ban on diesel exports is under consideration — after his own deputy prime minister had told reporters that no such ban was necessary. The Russian leader confirmed that a task force is now at work on fuel issues.
Putin also warned that agriculture is at risk and said Russia must “reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure” — a carefully worded reversal for a leader who has dismissed Ukrainian drone strikes as irrelevant.
There is no small irony in the fact that, for years, the systematic destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure — power stations, substations, heating plants — has been one of Russia’s most deliberate wartime strategies, designed to break civilian morale by making ordinary life unbearable. Ukraine now appears to have turned that logic around, and Russians are beginning to feel the pointed end of that strategy themselves.
It is fueling hope, though, among Moscow’s Western critics.
At the Group of Seven summit in France earlier this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was unequivocal. “The tide is turning for Ukraine,” she asserted. “The situation in 2026 is very different from 2025. Russia’s fatigue is openly showing. That’s the time to double down on our support.”
Western officials say the Ukrainian campaign has choked Russian fuel supplies and military deliveries, stalling Moscow’s efforts on the battlefield.
In a recent report, the Council on Foreign Relations noted that a scaling up of drone operations contributed directly to Ukraine retaking 78 square miles of territory in February and reversing a trend of Russian gains that had characterized the battlefield throughout 2025.
Even the tone of US President Donald Trump appears to have shifted.
At the G7 summit, he told reporters that Russia “should make a deal.” Days later, back in Washington and speaking from the Oval Office, he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “courageous” and someone who is “doing pretty well” in the war — notably warmer words from a president who spent much of last year publicly pressuring Kyiv to negotiate from a position of weakness.
Zelensky, for his part, has been explicit about what he believes his drone campaign can achieve. With the right support, Ukraine can “quickly create conditions in which Russia will be forced to choose peace,” he said.
But it may be a mistake to conclude that Russia’s current problems will force the Kremlin to yield, at least not yet and probably not soon.
Putin over the decades has built a relatively brittle image as an uncompromising leader — a fact that makes capitulation, retreat or even compromise in Ukraine incredibly unlikely and difficult for him to pull off.
With well over a million dead and injured in Putin’s invasion, according to the best Western estimates, and sovereignty claims staked on four Ukrainian regions he still doesn’t fully control, any settlement that cannot be portrayed in Moscow as a decisive victory runs the risk of provoking serious internal political tensions.
The hawks in Putin’s circle are still telling him that Ukraine’s entire Donbas region can and should be taken. That argument doesn’t disappear just because Russian refineries are on fire.
And while the country’s current fuel shortage is painfully real, it should not be mistaken for a white flag.
