Putin called the fuel shortage in Russia “not critical”, and Ukrainian attacks on energy facilities an “information campaign”

In an interview with VGTRK employee Pavel Zarubin, Vladimir Putin admitted that Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure “create problems” with fuel. A transcript of his words was published on the Kremlin website.

“It's obvious. We are now observing a certain deficit, but it is not critical,” Putin said.

According to him, due to the impacts and fuel shortages, authorities must solve “several problems.” The first of them is to “quickly and significantly increase the production of the most popular air defense systems” to “cover the relevant facilities.”

“It is clear what needs to be done in order to ensure normal supply, to get rid of this temporary shortage: we need to get out of repairs faster, we need to establish the necessary volume of imports and, as I already said, reliably cover these facilities,” Putin said.

He also said that in Crimea there is now a supply of fuel for several days, “but the needs will be met”: the authorities will “increase” supplies to the annexed peninsula by land and sea.

“In general, attacks on our civilian infrastructure are carried out not only to cause us some damage, although I think this is important for the enemy, but also to fuel an information campaign. And maybe, to be more precise, not even a campaign, but an information operation, as part of the confrontation with Russia. At a minimum, with the goal of creating self-doubt in us, in our abilities, and even better - to create a split in Russian society and force Russia to suspend, at least for some short time, the offensive of our troops on the line of combat contact, and create conditions for the start of the negotiation process on conditions favorable to itself, that is, to our enemy. We will not give them such a chance,” Putin added.

Fuel crisis in Russia Reuters: Russia intends to buy 50 thousand tons of gasoline from Kazakhstan to mitigate the shortage Kommersant: Russian refineries were allowed to produce Euro-3 quality fuel under the guise of Euro-5 due to the risk of a shortage on the market In Crimea, they stopped selling fuel at gas stations, only government vehicles were allowed to refuel Tatneft introduced restrictions on the sale of fuel at all its gas stations In Russian marketplaces have banned advertisements for the sale of gasoline; The FAS explained this by the fight against speculation in the market. Regional public pages and media reported on the blocking of at least five chats in the Max messenger, where residents discussed problems with gasoline