Fact check: Is Russia losing refineries ?

1. How severe is the refinery damage — a historic shock to Russian fuel supply

Multiple contemporaneous reports converge on a single headline number: about 38% of Russia’s primary refining capacity was offline as of September 28–late September 2025, creating what several outlets call the country’s worst fuel shortage in decades. These accounts indicate a rapid deterioration in processing capability following a concentrated campaign of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on refineries and associated infrastructure, and they emphasize that gasoline output has fallen sharply, with one report quantifying a decline of roughly 1 million tons ^{[1] [3] [4]}. The uniformity of the percentage across independent outlets strengthens the core factual claim even as details about individual facilities vary.

2. Who claims responsibility for the outages and what methods were used

Ukrainian sources and Western media attribute the outages primarily to Ukrainian drone and missile attacks on over two dozen major refineries since early August, with one analysis estimating that 70% of outages were directly caused by drone strikes. Reporting documents fires at major facilities, including a significant blaze at the Yaroslavl refinery, and characterizes the campaign as deliberately aimed at crippling Russia’s fuel processing and export abilities. Russian domestic reporting and shortages corroborate that physical damage and operational halts occurred; the consensus view across these reports is that kinetic strikes were the proximate cause for a substantial share of capacity loss ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

3. Domestic market consequences — fuel scarcity and distribution pain

The immediate economic effect inside Russia is a significant domestic fuel shortage, with price and availability disruptions reported at privately owned filling stations and a widening supply gap estimated at about 20% for the domestic market by some sources. High interest rates and preexisting logistical frictions are cited as compounding factors that have worsened the distribution of remaining fuel stocks, making certain grades scarce and fueling public concern. These operational and financial pressures magnify the real‑world impact of refinery downtime beyond the raw percentage of capacity lost ^{[7] [5]}.

4. Budgetary and export implications — a hit to revenue and export flows

Several reports assert that the refinery outages have inflicted a substantial blow to Russian fuel exports and, by extension, state budget revenues, since processed petroleum products account for important export and excise income streams. With dozens of refineries partially or fully offline, crude can’t be turned into higher‑value products at previous volumes, squeezing both domestic supply and external shipments. Analysts cited in the reporting warn that sustained outages would pressure government receipts and could force adjustments to export logistics, although precise fiscal impacts were not uniformly quantified across the sources ^{[6] [2]}.

5. Attribution, propaganda and the limits of available reporting

While Ukrainian and Western outlets uniformly link the outages to Ukraine’s strike campaign, source motivations and framing vary: Ukrainian media emphasize strategic success and economic impact, Western outlets frame the events as a significant escalation and operational achievement, and Russian coverage focuses on shortages and service disruptions while sometimes downplaying strategic vulnerabilities. The near‑identical 38–40% figure across outlets suggests a shared underlying dataset or repeated official estimates, but differences in facility-level reporting and cause attribution mean that some claims—such as the precise share of outages directly caused by drones versus maintenance or economic shutdowns—remain open to nuance ^{[3] [5] [1]}.

6. What’s missing — technical detail, repair timelines and independent verification

The public reporting emphasizes aggregate capacity lost but provides limited verifiable breakdowns by refinery, exact damage assessments, and credible repair timelines; independent on‑the‑ground verification of damage and restoration schedules is scarce in these accounts. That gap matters because the long‑term strategic consequence depends heavily on how quickly damaged units can be repaired, whether spare processing capacity exists elsewhere, and how the state will prioritize reconstruction. Without facility‑level engineering assessments or transparent restoration plans, the 38–40% figure captures current disruption but not persistence or recovery trajectory ^{[1] [4]}.

7. Bottom line — Russia is temporarily losing refining capacity, but the full story will hinge on repairs and policy choices

Contemporary reporting from late September 2025 documents that Russia experienced a historic and concentrated loss of refinery capacity—around 38%—largely attributed to Ukrainian strikes, producing acute domestic shortages and export pressures. The factual core is robust across multiple outlets, but the longer‑term strategic and economic consequences depend on repair timelines, alternative processing solutions, and Russian policy responses—areas where public reporting so far supplies limited, often partisan, detail. Continued monitoring of facility‑level restoration and independent verification will be necessary to judge whether this disruption becomes a sustained structural loss or a severe but recoverable shock ^{[1] [2] [7]}.