Ukraine’s offensive against Russia causes petrol panic across Central Asia
A Russian woman explained on camera what made her and a smiling, bearded man next to her drive to a petrol station in Kazakhstan. “Simply to fill the tank,” she said in a viral video that explains new terms in today’s Russia: “fuel tourism” and “gas hunting”.
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Key Facts
- Fact 1: But some industrious smugglers still make their way across the world’s second-longest land border that stretches 7,644km (4,750 miles) across the barren steppe, according to people interviewed for this article.
- Fact 2: Even though Kazakhstan boasts three giant, Soviet-era oil refineries, fuel prices in Kazakhstan increased by 15.6 percent this year, the UlusMedia website reported on July 10 .
- Fact 3: Only one of Kazakhstan’s neighbours, Turkmenistan, has large hydrocarbon reserves, but its autocratic leaders isolated the country from the rest of the region in the 1990s.
- Fact 4: ‘Deficit here for a long time’ Other Central Asian nations feel the ripple effect too – especially Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, resource-poor, mountainous nations that used to get up to 90 percent of their petrol from Russia.
A Russian woman explained on camera what made her and a smiling, bearded man next to her drive to a petrol station in Kazakhstan. “Simply to fill the tank,” she said in a viral video that explains new terms in today’s Russia: “fuel tourism” and “gas hunting”.
‘Long-range sanctions’: Ukraine hopes strikes cause Russia fear and losses ‘New level of danger’: Drone incidents scare Europe amid Russia-Ukraine war Russian expert warns of impending social crisis as Ukraine death toll rises How China and Russia could hobble Trump’s plans to isolate Iran For most of this year, swarms of Ukrainian drones have been burning down Russian oil refineries and fuel depots from annexed Crimea to the Baltic to western Siberia, causing sky-high plumes of putrid smoke. As Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to resume peace talks, claiming that his forces “advance in all directions”, tens of millions of Russians face fuel shortages and hours-long queues at petrol stations – with occasional shouting and fist fights. And those living in regions bordering Kazakhstan – including a string of urban centres along the Volga River, Russia’s most densely populated region – drive to Central Asia’s most oil-rich nation, often hundreds of kilometres, just to fill up.
(Original synthesis pending human/AI review — generated by the stub provider by selecting real sentences from the source material, not by writing new analysis or commentary.)
Original source: Al Jazeera
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