\n<\/p>\n
To stay calm in the queue Lyubov is stroking her pet dog Agatha.<\/p>\n
How does Lyubov view the fuel crisis?<\/p>\n
“Everyone says there is a difficult situation in the country,” Lyubov tells me. “Everyone connects this to that situation.”<\/p>\n
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 there were no drone attacks on Russian oil refineries – or on any facilities inside Russia. These strikes haven’t forced the Kremlin to U-turn. It’s continuing what it still calls the “special military operation”, Russia’s war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
To ease the crisis, Russia has begun importing petrol.<\/p>\n
That is extraordinary for a country widely recognised as an energy superpower and one of the world’s leading exporters of crude oil.<\/p>\n
To reduce the fuel shortage the government has also temporarily authorised the production and sale of lower-grade petrol, like Euro 2, which is faster to produce. Euro 2 contains up to 50 times more sulphur than modern Euro 5 and was banned in Russia in 2013.<\/p>\n
It comes with a warning.<\/p>\n
“For modern cars,” wrote the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, “regular use of lower-grade petrol can increase the pressure on the fuel injector, spark plugs, oxygen sensors, the catalytic converter and soot filter. Euro 2 won’t kill an engine on one re-fuelling. But it sharply reduces the margin of safety.”<\/p>\n
It’s not just the targeting of oil facilities which have brought the war home to Russians. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian strikes on distribution centres of Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon, are causing disruption to shoppers and economic pain for sellers.<\/p>\n
This week President Vladimir Putin conceded that attacks on industrial facilities and infrastructure “do inflict damage; this is obvious. We understand this, we see it.”<\/p>\n
But the Kremlin leader played down the problems.<\/p>\n
“There are no critical consequences from such attacks. There have not been and cannot be.”<\/p>\n
In other words, no need for panic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n