Economic analyst Stanimir Dobrev said that the Russian authorities have no plan to overcome the fuel shortage and effectively can only hope that the situation will not lead to fuel protests by the end of the year. According to him, Russia’s ability to quickly solve the problem is limited.
Stanimir Dobrev writes this on X.
As Dobrev notes, increasing production by lowering gasoline quality and using more light petroleum products will not solve the problem. He compared such an approach to “a band-aid on an open wound.”
Fuel supplies from Belarus will not be able to significantly change the situation. To cover Russia’s needs, such supplies would have to be increased at least tenfold, but Minsk does not have such capacity.
Dobrev noted that after the previous fuel crisis, Russia did not manage to create additional large fuel storage tanks. Such capacities are built over years, not several months.
In addition, Russia cannot simply purchase large volumes of fuel by sea, since its infrastructure was mainly created for exports, not for large-scale imports.
According to the observer, the Russian leadership is trying to shift responsibility for the fuel crisis onto governors. Russian President Vladimir Putin does not want to personally deal with a problem he considers insignificant.
Dobrev believes that the most realistic option for Russia now is to hope that the situation does not lead to large-scale fuel protests. He also noted that restrictions on gasoline sales continue to appear in different regions of Russia.
