Gasoline shortages caused by the war with Ukraine have besieged Russians with endless gas stations lines, heated arguments and even a MMA worthy fistfight at one filling station captured on video.
One of the two combatants fighting toe to toe delivers skilled, head-level kicks at his opponent in the kind of move seen in professional mixed martial arts (MMA) contests.
The footage from filling stations across several Russian regions, obtained by Fox News, confirm Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public admission that Ukrainian long-range strikes are creating fuel problems within Mother Russia.
Addressing a meeting of senior officials on fuel supply and distribution Sunday, Putin said the country had to minimize the effects of Ukrainian drone strikes on oil instillations.
“You are well aware that problems for drivers and for businesses persist,” Putin told the meeting, according to accounts published by Russian news agencies and reported by Reuters. “Unfortunately, there are still queues at gas stations too.”
He added: “We have to reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure.”
Putin said gasoline reserves were being tapped and now stood at 1.7 million metric tons and other measures were being considered.
Cars queue at a gas station operated by Rosneft, a state-controlled Russian oil company, on June 27, 2026, in Moscow, Russia. Russia has been experiencing a fuel crisis since mid-June, caused by increased Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries. (Contributor/Getty Images)
“The need to introduce a complete ban on the export of diesel fuel is being considered,” he told participants, according to Reuters. Suppling agriculture with needed fuel was the top priority, he said.
“We need to make every effort to ensure that all seasonal fuel supply schedules are maintained for agro-industrial enterprises, because the harvest depends on it,” Putin said.
Ukraine’s aggressive military campaign using drones to inflict damage in Russian territory is yielding results, Fox News reported.
According to Fox:
For Ukraine, the fuel crisis is evidence that its long-range strike campaign is doing more than damaging individual facilities. The attacks are forcing Moscow to manage visible problems at home, exposing a vulnerability in a country whose global power has long rested on its energy sector. Ukraine increasingly has used long-range drones to target Russian oil refineries, depots and supply routes hundreds of miles from its border.
Fuel shortages have spread across Russia, including occupied Crimea, southern Russia, Siberia and Moscow. Moscow also is weighing emergency measures, including temporarily allowing the production and import of lower-quality fuel, according to a draft government document reported by the Kommersant daily newspaper.
Maxim Katz, a Russian opposition figure and former Moscow municipal deputy, told Fox News Digital that “In some cities, you have to spend half a day looking for fuel, and then they give you only a little, and you have to get back in line again.”
Videos obtained by the outlet show not reveal a number of confrontations, including the fight between two men, women arguing over their place in line and a male driver shouting obscenities at several women before punching one of them.
One woman, identified only as Tanya, 29, told one news outlet she waited 13 hours in Siberia to get half a tank of fuel and blamed Putin’s war for the chaos.
“He should stop this senseless conflict and let us live normally,” she said.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.