In the latest episode of Russia Decoded, hosts Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday discuss Russia’s domestic fuel crisis, sparked by Ukrainian drone strikes.

The war in Ukraine has moved from being a conflict of territorial maneuver to one of depletion. And both sides are showing the strain. Ukraine’s shortage of air-defense interceptors has reached a crisis point: during a massive Russian attack on Kyiv on July 6, Ukraine failed to intercept 23 ballistic missiles or six hypersonic Zircons fired at the capital, an assault that killed at least 26 people. While Ukrainian forces still down most incoming drones, most Russian ballistic missiles now get through, a gap Moscow is exploiting with concentrated bombardments. On the ground, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the capture of Kostyantynivka, a transport and industrial hub he described as strategically significant for Russia’s push through the Donetsk region.

Yet Russia is bleeding, too. Ukrainian drones have systematically dismantled the country’s refining capacity, with the Financial Times reporting up to 40 percent knocked offline. The result is the worst fuel crisis of the Putin era: by July, shortages or rationing had spread to most of Russia’s 83 regions, affecting an estimated 50 million people, while occupied Crimea declared a state of emergency and severely restricted fuel sales. Putin has conceded a “certain shortage” while insisting it is not critical, and he has pledged faster repairs, possible gasoline imports, and expanded air-defense production. Whether Kyiv’s strikes can outpace Moscow’s repairs is now a central question of the war.

Ukraine’s answer to its own vulnerability came at the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8, where the alliance’s cohesion faced its own endurance test. Leaders agreed to more than $50 billion in new procurement commitments spanning missile defense, precision-strike weapons, and drones, although only five of NATO’s 32 members are on track to hit the 3.5 percent core defense-spending target this year. The headline for Kyiv: US President Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the US would license Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles domestically. The license was not actually granted in Ankara, however, and manufacturers Lockheed Martin and RTX had reportedly not been informed. Relief remains months away at best.

Hanging over all of it is the Middle East. The US-Iran ceasefire collapsed the same week, after Iranian strikes on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz triggered successive rounds of American retaliation. Trump declared the ceasefire “over,” as US forces struck roughly 90 Iranian targets. For Moscow, a renewed Gulf war carries a silver lining; tighter oil markets and a distracted Washington are welcome developments for a Kremlin betting it can simply outlast everyone else. That bet, and how Russian state television sells it, is the subject of this week’s episode of Russia Decoded.

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About the Speakers: Andy Kuchins and Chris Monday

Andrew C. Kuchins is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has served as President of the American University of Central Asia and the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center as well as the Russia and Eurasia Programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author or editor of seven books, and has published columns for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other media outlets.

Chris Monday is an associate professor of economics at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea and an expert on Russian politics, history, and post-communist societies. He teaches international economics, future studies, and development economics. From 1996 to 2004, he lived continuously in Russia.

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