(MOSCOW) – Russia’s deepening fuel crisis is eroding public support for the war, with ordinary Russians openly linking petrol shortages and soaring prices to the Kremlin’s prolonged invasion of Ukraine.
Street interviews in the capital reveal a sharp shift in public sentiment. “We need to end the war,” drivers in Moscow said candidly, acknowledging that without peace, domestic oil refineries will not resume normal operations. Others predicted the petrol crisis would soon push up the cost of all goods, bracing for a wider economic shock. A few supporters of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin still resort to familiar platitudes, but some citizens are now contemplating drastic measures as the euphoria fades.
The shortages have reached Moscow, forcing residents to abandon rose tinted glasses. Drivers and passers by increasingly connect empty fuel tanks and vehicle breakdowns to what the Kremlin calls the special military operation, a campaign initially touted to take Kyiv in three days that has now dragged on longer than the First World War. Muscovites have expressed extreme pessimism about any quick resolution.
When the problem became impossible to conceal, the Kremlin deployed heavier propaganda artillery. RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan, appearing on Vladimir Solovyov’s programme, urged Russians to stop panicking over the petrol shortage and to recall the turbulent 1990s. She argued the current collapse is a minor issue compared to her own childhood in Krasnodar.
Following the logic of Kremlin mouthpieces, Muscovites should perhaps recall other difficult eras, such as 1812 when Moscow was not merely out of fuel but burned down by the French. Alternatively, residents could remember a time before Moscow existed on any world map, when wild swamps dominated the landscape, frogs croaked, and nobody complained about engine performance because everyone walked in bast shoes, the early medieval sneakers made of tree bark, while gathering moss.
Russian citizens may eventually realise their country’s main problem is not a temporary fuel shortage. The real issue is the absolute lack of choice within Russia itself, the choice to live in a normal country rather than exist for decades under a single unchanging leader indifferent to how his people feel. And regarding the Russian dictator himself, it is worth remembering that Russia’s past was not only about hardship. Occasionally, it was also about revolution, and in one particular case, it happened when Russia started losing a war.
The Russian economy continues to reap the bitter fruits of Moscow’s aggression. The massive fuel crisis has already paralysed petrol stations in many regions. The Russian Federation has also seen a significant collapse in its dual use chemical industry. Recent official data from Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service shows ammonium nitrate production fell by 9 percent compared to the same period last year. The situation is deteriorating rapidly, with the decline reaching a catastrophic 14 percent year over year in May alone.
Ammonium nitrate is a classic dual use product, critically important as fertiliser for agriculture but also a key component for the military industrial complex in manufacturing explosives. Russian generals will now have to choose between leaving fields unfertilised and exacerbating the food crisis or slashing ordnance production.
Russian government agencies traditionally attempt to cover up the disaster by attributing the production collapse to unscheduled maintenance, a euphemism meaning Ukrainian drone strikes damaged another factory. Still, ordinary Russians are gradually beginning to realise the crisis is fundamentally self inflicted and could be ended relatively easily.
At the NATO summit in Ankara, US President Donald Trump acknowledged that Ukraine’s long range strikes could help end the war faster. Military pressure is one element, as an army cannot fight without fuel or resources. Psychological influence is another. If more Russians awaken from the propaganda matrix and conclude they do not want a war that is drying up their fuel, the indicted war criminal in the Kremlin may need to reconsider a few things, unless he is too far gone down the rabbit hole of his own making.
Footage of street interviews in Moscow was broadcast by TVP World.
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