Putin addresses ‘challenging’ Russian petrol shortages for first time

Vladimir Putin addressed Russia’s worsening fuel crisis for the first time on Tuesday as Ukrainian forces showed no signs of relenting in their campaign of systematic strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. 

In a report on the “difficult” fuel situation delivered during a video conference with the government on Tuesday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak described the shortages as “challenging but under control”, and said that by increasing refinery capacity and postponing or curtailing planned maintenance work, the government would be able to ensure that pumps wouldn’t run dry.

Putin responded by saying that the threats being created by “the Kyiv regime” must be “minimised” and that the continued Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure could not be allowed to influence events on the front lines, where, he said, “Russian troops are liberating one settlement after another, one territory after another.”

Though, according to Putin, the continuing Ukrainian attacks on Russia only served to “motivate the soldiers on the battlefield to carry out the tasks set before them by the country”, he also stressed Russia’s readiness for negotiations with Ukraine, though only on the basis of agreements reached between the parties at peace talks in Istanbul in 2022. 

According to a report by the Financial Times on Monday, Putin has become increasingly deluded about both the Russian military’s progress on the ground in Ukraine and the scale of its own technological advances, and is having his perception of reality further warped by the frequency of the briefings he receives from the Russian military’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.