Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian refineries has rocked not only Russia's own fuel market but those of Central Asia too, Carnegie Politika's Galiya Ibragimova wrote on August 6, warning the region has little time to avert a full-scale shortage.

Central Asian states have their own refining capacity, but for decades it has been cheaper and easier to buy processed fuel from Russia. The export restrictions Moscow imposed in April in response to Ukraine's strikes pushed retail gasoline prices in the region up 15-25% y/y in dollar terms, depending on the country, with the shortage now also threatening diesel supplies ahead of the autumn harvest.

“When faced with fuel shortages in the past, Central Asian governments could always count on additional supplies from Moscow to alleviate the economic and political strain. That safety net no longer exists, and the source of the problem is now Russia itself,” Ibragimova wrote.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are trying to offset the decline in imports by ramping up domestic refining capacity, but Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have far fewer options given their minimal refining capacity, and have already turned to China, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Belarus for potential help. In Kyrgyzstan, more than 90% of gasoline consumed comes from Russia; in Tajikistan, Russia accounted for 84% of petroleum-product imports in 2025.

The squeeze has spread to aviation fuel too. Shortages and rising jet-fuel costs, compounded by tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, forced Uzbekistan Airways to cut the frequency of some flights to Russia in June. Russian supplies account for about 40% of Kazakhstan's jet-fuel consumption and more than a quarter of Uzbekistan's gasoline consumption.

For Central Asian governments, fuel shortages carry a political risk beyond the purely economic: energy-related grievances, from fuel and power shortages to rising utility bills, have repeatedly sparked mass unrest in the region, including Kazakhstan's deadly January 2022 protests, discontent in Uzbekistan during the bitterly cold winter of 2022-23, and Kyrgyzstan's 2010 revolution.

Even Turkmenistan, rich in its own hydrocarbon resources and not dependent on Russian imports, has faced chronic domestic fuel shortages for years because so much of its output is geared toward export.

Moscow has formally maintained fuel-export exemptions for Central Asian states under existing intergovernmental agreements, but in practice this changes little, Ibragimova noted, since Russia itself now has no surplus fuel to sell. The crisis has also exposed the fragility of an informal system of regional resale - Kazakhstan supplied about 120,000 tonnes of motor fuel to Uzbekistan in 2025, and similar arrangements exist between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - which depends on Russian supply being available to redistribute in the first place.

China has agreed to supply Kyrgyzstan with 3,000 tonnes of jet fuel and may add another 5,000 tonnes of diesel, but that is a drop in the bucket against Kyrgyzstan's monthly fuel consumption of around 125,000 tonnes, and only Kazakhstan has a direct rail link to China - fuel for the rest of the region would have to move overland via Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, on much lower-capacity roads. Azerbaijan could become an alternative supplier via Caspian Sea ferry routes, but capacity there is constrained by a shortage of vessels and underdeveloped port infrastructure.

“Russia's fuel crisis is proof that, even in the face of a shared risk, each country still insists on acting alone,” Ibragimova concluded, noting that despite repeated statements about regional rapprochement, Central Asia has yet to produce a common plan to address the shortage.