Russia now importing fuel from South Korea, Turkey because of Ukraine drone strikes, report says
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Russia has had to expand the number of countries it imports fuel from as Ukrainian strikes continue to hammer at the foundations of Moscow's economy, according to a new report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) think tank published Sept. 11.
Media reports in August indicated that Russia was importing gasoline from India for the first time, but the latest report by CREA mentions that Moscow has also had to rely on South Korea and Turkey for imports.
Oil imports surged to 172,000 metric tons in August, "more than seven times the previous monthly high," reads the report.
"Russia was forced to import fuel from South Korea and buy back gasoline refined from its own crude in India," the report notes.
Turkey "appears to have started shipping gasoline to Russia, with the first cargoes arriving in September 2026."
The report mentions that Ukrainian strikes on Russia's energy industry have "turned the tables on the world's once largest oil product exporter."
In recent weeks, Ukraine has launched successful attacks against Russian energy infrastructure on a near-daily basis.
"Russia's need to buy gasoline from a refinery it partly owns in India and ship it halfway around the world using the same fleet that carries its exports has demonstrated the impact of Ukrainian drone strikes on its domestic refining capacity," reads the CREA report.
According to CREA, Ukrainian strikes on the port at Novorossiysk in southwestern Russia interrupted exports for nine consecutive days, "the longest disruption since Russia's full-scale invasion began."
The oil-export Black Sea port at Tuapse, Russia's fourth-largest before 2022, "did not load a single cargo of oil products for the third consecutive month" after being struck by drones in May.
But even with some 40% of Russia's oil-refining infrastructure taken offline, Ukrainian military intelligence estimates that Russia can keep waging war through 2028.
