OPEN LETTER: To those standing in gas lines across Russia

Introduction: A letter to those state television never shows you

What the numbers don't say about hours lost

I am writing to you from outside a country I have never visited, about a reality I can only observe through reports, statistics, and secondhand accounts. But I am writing anyway, because what is happening right now at gas stations across Russia deserves to be named for what it is: the direct, documented, and predictable consequence of a war your government chose to start and has chosen to keep waging since February 2022.

According to Al Jazeera, in an article published on July 9, 2026, more than 90% of Russian regions have now imposed some form of rationing or are reporting gasoline and diesel shortages. This is no longer a regional anomaly, an isolated incident in some distant province. It has become the norm, from one end to the other of a territory spanning eleven time zones. Nine out of ten regions — that is nearly the entire country now feeling the direct economic consequences of this war.

Why this letter, and why now

I am writing this letter not to gloat over your hardship — I take no pleasure in watching ordinary citizens wait for hours to fill a tank — but to name a truth your state television refuses to say plainly: this shortage is not a climate accident, nor a normal fluctuation of global energy markets. It is the direct result of a methodical Ukrainian energy-strike campaign, waged in response to an invasion your country launched, unprovoked, against a sovereign neighbor.

This letter is addressed to you, ordinary citizens, not to those who decide this war from offices inside the Kremlin. I know many of you never supported this invasion, that some of you endure it in silence, under fear of a crackdown that has muzzled public dissent since 2022. This letter is not a judgment on you individually. It is a reminder of facts your government prefers to hide.

Writing an open letter to millions of people you don't know can feel like a pointless exercise. But I believe naming things correctly — saying that these lines are the direct price of a war chosen by your government, not some economic accident — is an act of respect for your intelligence, even if your state television never offers you that honesty.

What 90% of regions in shortage actually reveal

A scale unlike anything Russia has seen in decades

This number deserves to be sat with: more than 90% of Russian regions affected, according to Al Jazeera. For a country that has presented itself for decades as an energy superpower, a major exporter of oil and gas to the entire world, this statistic amounts to an almost ironic reversal. Russia, which has long wielded its oil as a geopolitical weapon against Europe, now finds itself unable to guarantee a stable supply to its own citizens.

This situation did not appear overnight. It results from an accumulation of strikes carried out by Ukraine against Russian refineries, export terminals, and fuel transport infrastructure since the start of the year. Each strike, taken alone, might have seemed manageable for a country the size of Russia. But their methodical accumulation, month after month, has ended up producing a systemic effect that even state propaganda now struggles to fully hide.

Rationing as a silent admission of failure

When a government imposes fuel rationing, it implicitly admits, even without saying so out loud, that the normal market can no longer meet demand. It is an admission of failure that Russian authorities try to minimize by presenting it as a temporary precaution, rather than the consequence of a war that costs the national economy more every single day. But the citizens waiting in line for hours are not fooled by this rhetoric, even if they don't always have the means to say so publicly.

This reality directly contradicts the official narrative the Russian government has tried to maintain since the invasion began: that of a resilient economy, capable of absorbing Western sanctions and continuing its war effort without major consequences for the population. The lines outside gas stations tell a different story, one that official statistics can no longer conceal.

There is something deeply telling in the fact that a country selling oil to the entire world can no longer supply enough of it to its own citizens. This is not a global energy crisis hitting Russia. It is the direct and deserved consequence of a war its own government chose to fight.

Ukraine's campaign: a strategy aimed at the economic nerve

Striking energy, striking the ability to wage war

Ukraine's campaign of strikes against Russian energy infrastructure is not a blind act of vengeance. It is a deliberate strategy aimed at the economic nerve of the Russian war effort. Oil and gas fund the Russian army, pay soldiers' salaries, and buy munitions and military equipment. By hitting this system at its source, Ukraine seeks to progressively reduce Russia's ability to finance and sustain its own invasion.

This strategy fits into a logic of asymmetric warfare: Ukraine, lacking Russia's massive conventional army, has chosen to strike systemic points of vulnerability rather than seek a frontal confrontation that could never be won through brute force alone. It is a strategy that, in some ways, echoes the logic of Western economic sanctions, but applied directly and physically, strike after strike, on Russian territory itself.

A proportionate response to an aggression that never was

It is essential to recall the broader context: this energy-strike campaign comes as a direct response to years of Russian bombardment against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure — power plants, heating networks, hospitals, schools. While Russia deliberately cut electricity and heating to millions of Ukrainian civilians in the depths of winter, Ukraine chose to respond by hitting precise military-industrial targets, not random civilian populations.

This moral distinction deserves to be stressed relentlessly, because it is too often absent from narratives that present this war as a symmetrical conflict between two equivalent sides. There is nothing symmetrical between a country that invades its neighbor and bombs its civilians, and a country that retaliates by striking the infrastructure that finances that invasion.

People sometimes accuse me of not condemning Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure firmly enough. My answer is always the same: there is no moral equivalence between the aggressor and the one defending itself, even when that defense takes the form of a deep strike. Russia chose this war. It is now paying the price at the pump.

What ordinary Russian families live through behind the statistics

Hours lost, daily life upended

Behind every rationing statistic lies a concrete human reality: workers who must arrive earlier at the gas station before their shift, families who have to recalculate their commutes, farmers who depend on diesel for their machinery and see their livelihoods disrupted by shortages they have no way to control. These are ordinary lives, upended by a geopolitical decision made thousands of kilometers away, in the corridors of power in Moscow.

It would be easy, from the outside, to reduce this situation to a simple economic-warfare statistic. But every hour spent in a gas line is an hour stolen from the normal lives of citizens who, in their overwhelming majority, never had any say in the decision to invade Ukraine. This is one of the war's cruelest truths: those who pay for it most in daily life are not always the ones who decided it.

Imposed silence rather than protest

A darker reality also needs naming: in a country where publicly protesting the war can lead to criminal prosecution, prison, or professional retaliation, most Russian citizens have no legal space to organize and express their frustration over these shortages. This absence of visible protest does not mean an absence of real frustration — it simply means that frustration shows up in silent lines, on Telegram and VK channels where residents document local shortages, rather than in the streets.

It is precisely this lack of a democratic outlet for dissent that fundamentally sets Putin's Russia apart from the Western societies this war is supposed to threaten. A government that cannot tolerate criticism from its own population is not a government winning a war — it is a government prolonging one, at a cost of suffering it refuses to acknowledge publicly.

I often think about this fundamental difference between our societies: here, you can publicly criticize a war, protest, write open letters like this one, without fearing prison. In Russia, the same freedom of speech can cost years behind bars. That difference is not a footnote. It is the fault line separating the West from what Putin's regime has become.

The myth of Russian economic resilience is collapsing

A propaganda line growing harder to sustain

Since Western sanctions began in 2022, the Kremlin's official narrative has consistently insisted on the Russian economy's resilience against outside pressure. State media have run countless reports on an economy supposedly still growing despite sanctions, on substitute industries offsetting lost trade with the West, on a population supposedly not really feeling the war's daily effects.

This shortage touching more than 90% of Russian regions cracks that narrative in a nearly irrefutable way. You cannot claim an economy is functioning normally when its own citizens can no longer fill their tanks without waiting for hours or submitting to official restrictions. The resilience proclaimed by state propaganda literally runs into the empty fuel gauges of Russian cars.

A war economy that starts devouring its own foundations

What makes this situation especially significant is that it hits a sector — energy — that has historically been the pillar of Russian economic power. This is not some secondary industry suffering; it is the very core of the economic model on which Russia's ability to finance its war and maintain a semblance of domestic stability rests. When this pillar starts to shake, the entire structure becomes vulnerable.

Western economic analysts tracking this issue are documenting a progressive but real degradation of Russian refining capacity, a direct consequence of repeated strikes on oil facilities. This methodical erosion is not an accident — it is the result of a coherent Ukrainian strategy that precisely targets this breaking point.

There is an almost poetic justice in this reversal: a regime that built its power on oil exports now finds itself unable to supply its own population. The oil that long served as a weapon against Europe is now turning against those who wielded it as a threat.

What the West needs to understand about this shortage

Tangible proof that sanctions and strikes work together

For Western capitals that have spent years debating the real effectiveness of economic sanctions against Russia, this widespread fuel shortage is tangible proof that combining economic pressure with direct military strikes produces real cumulative effects. Sanctions alone, applied unevenly and sometimes circumvented by third countries, would probably not have been enough to produce this crisis. But combined with Ukrainian strikes directly targeting refining infrastructure, they create systemic pressure that Russia increasingly struggles to absorb.

This lesson should shape future Western policy: rather than choosing between economic sanctions and military support for Ukraine, it is becoming clear that these two levers reinforce one another. The West must keep supporting Ukraine's ability to strike the infrastructure that finances the Russian war, while maintaining and strengthening existing economic sanctions.

The question of duration: how long can Russia hold out

This widespread shortage raises a major strategic question for the months ahead: how long can a country sustain a costly war effort while imposing fuel restrictions on 90% of its regions? There is no certain answer to this question, and it would be reckless to predict an imminent Russian economic collapse on this basis alone. But the current trajectory — shortages spreading rather than easing, refining capacity continuing to degrade under repeated strikes — is not moving in Moscow's favor.

For Western decision-makers, this situation represents a strategic window that would be a shame not to fully exploit by maintaining steady support for Ukraine, both militarily and financially. Every additional month of shortage in Russia potentially brings closer the moment when this war's cost becomes politically unsustainable for Putin's regime, even within a system as tightly controlled as his.

I don't believe in predictions of imminent collapse — history has taught us that authoritarian regimes can absorb considerable economic suffering without collapsing quickly. But I firmly believe that every documented shortage wears down a little more the legitimacy of a leadership that promised its population a fast, costless war.

To you enduring these shortages: what this letter really means

Naming responsibility without erasing your humanity

I close this letter by turning back to you, ordinary Russian citizens waiting in gas lines. This letter was never meant to humiliate you or celebrate your daily hardship. Its purpose is to clearly name a truth your government prefers to hide: these shortages are not a whim of fate or some anonymous consequence of global geopolitics. They are the direct, logical result of a war your government chose to start, and continues to wage despite its growing human and economic cost, for Ukraine and now, increasingly, for you as well.

I do not claim to know what each of you truly thinks of this war, nor what pressures keep you from expressing it publicly. But I believe an uncomfortable truth still deserves to be told: as long as your government continues this invasion, these shortages will keep getting worse, because Ukraine will keep legitimately striking the infrastructure that finances this war.

An invitation to see past state propaganda

This open letter expects no reply — I know it will likely never reach you directly, filtered as it would be by your country's censorship apparatus. But I firmly believe in the value of naming things correctly, even when no one directly concerned can hear it. The war your government chose has a price, and that price is now measured in hours lost in lines, in empty gauges, and in official restrictions touching nearly the entirety of your vast country.

The responsibility for this situation does not rest on you, ordinary citizens. It rests on those who decided, in February 2022, that invading a sovereign neighbor was worth the price you are paying today at the pump. This responsibility deserves to be named, again and again, until those who bear it finally face its consequences.

I know some will find this letter a pointless exercise, addressed to people who will never read it. But I would rather name responsibility clearly than dissolve it in comfortable relativism. This war has an author. It is not you, ordinary citizens. It is your government.

Western solidarity: what Kyiv still expects from its allies

Military support, the condition behind this economic pressure

The economic pressure now hitting 90% of Russian regions would not be possible without the Western military support that lets Ukraine develop, produce, and deploy the capabilities needed for these deep strikes. Weapons deliveries, financing, and intelligence-sharing provided by Kyiv's allies since 2022 have allowed Ukraine to progressively build the arsenal that makes this energy campaign possible today. Without this steady support, Russia would probably never have faced this internal crisis.

This is one more reason why the West cannot afford to ease its support for Ukraine, even when ground operations appear stuck in a costly war of position. Every additional year of support translates directly into a greater Ukrainian capacity to strike the financing of the Russian war.

A lesson for democracies that still hesitate

For voices in Europe or the United States still questioning the value of maintaining costly financial and military support for Ukraine, this widespread shortage offers a concrete answer: cumulative pressure works, and it works precisely because the West has given Ukraine the means to carry it out. Abandoning this support now would waste years of strategic investment at the exact moment its effects become measurable and documented.

The US Congress, European parliaments, and institutions like NATO should see this Russian economic pressure as additional justification, not a reason to ease off. Victory in this war is also built through economic attrition, and that attrition only works if Western support remains steady.

I now address our own Western leaders directly: stopping support for Ukraine at the exact moment it is finally producing measurable results would be a major strategic and moral mistake. This is not the time to doubt. It is the time to hold the course.

Conclusion: A war coming home, one gas pump at a time

The invisible price becoming visible

For a long time, the war in Ukraine could seem, to many Russian citizens far from the front, an abstract reality, relayed by a state television that presented it as a distant, well-controlled operation. The fuel shortages now hitting more than 90% of Russian regions are changing that perception, whether people like it or not. The war is no longer just a matter of border regions or mobilized soldiers — it is now a tangible reality at every gas station, every line, every official restriction imposed by overwhelmed regional governors.

This reality is unlikely to improve as long as the Ukrainian energy-strike campaign continues, and there is no strategic reason why Ukraine should stop a campaign that is producing measurable, documented results. As long as the Russian invasion continues, this pressure will keep intensifying, region by region, empty pump by empty pump.

What remains uncertain, and what does not

It would be presumptuous to predict exactly when or how this cumulative economic pressure will affect the Russian regime's ability to continue its invasion. Authoritarian regimes often have a capacity for endurance that Western observers routinely underestimate. What is certain, however, is that this widespread shortage documents, beyond dispute, the real cost this war now imposes on the Russian population itself — a cost that state propaganda can delay but no longer fully hide.

This letter ends as it began: with the conviction that naming the truth, even from a distance, even without certainty that it will be heard, remains a necessary act in the face of a war that continues to claim victims on both sides of the border, at degrees that are of course incomparable, but real in each case.

I close this letter thinking of those silent lines, of citizens who never chose this war and yet pay its price every day, one empty gauge at a time. This is not a victory to celebrate without nuance. But it is a relentless reminder: wars of aggression always carry a price, and that price always finds its way home.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This open letter takes a clear editorial stance: support for Ukraine in its fight against an unprovoked invasion, firm opposition to the Russian war machine and to Vladimir Putin. The author holds that the West bears a responsibility for upholding a rules-based international order and must continue supporting Ukraine, including its capacity to strike the Russian energy infrastructure that finances the war. This positioning reflects the columnist's judgment and does not claim a false neutrality.

Methodology and sources

The central fact in this piece comes from an Al Jazeera article published on July 9, 2026, reporting that more than 90% of Russian regions have imposed some form of rationing or are reporting gasoline and diesel shortages, a direct consequence of Ukraine's energy-strike campaign. No fact, figure, or quote has been invented. The broader geopolitical context — Western sanctions, the conflict's history since 2022, the crackdown on dissent in Russia — relies on public facts widely documented by the international press.

Nature of the analysis and factual limits

This text is an editorially driven open letter, a genre that implies a personal tone and a direct address, not a neutral factual report. Maxime Marquette (MadMax) is a columnist-analyst whose mission is to interpret the news in light of documented geopolitical stakes. The author has no direct contact with Russian citizens and does not claim to know their individual opinions on the war — statements about their situation rely solely on data reported by Al Jazeera and the broader context documented by other international sources.

Sources

Primary sources

More than 90% of Russian regions hit by fuel shortages or rationing — Al Jazeera, July 9, 2026

Ongoing coverage of Ukraine's energy-strike campaign — The Kyiv Independent

News on Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure — Ukrinform

Secondary sources

Analysis on fuel shortages and the Russian war economy — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Coverage of the economic impact of Ukrainian strikes on Russia — UNITED24 Media

Geopolitical analysis on sanctions and the Russian war economy — Foreign Policy