By Sobir Kurbanov and Eldaniz Gusseinov
By early July 2026, Ukraine’s General Staff assessed that long-range drone strikes had disabled close to 43 percent of Russia’s oil refining capacity, and on July 6, drones reached the Omsk plant, the country’s largest refinery. The campaign has pushed Russia into fuel rationing across more than 50 regions and into restrictions on fuel exports. For Central Asia, the exposure runs through a dependence on Russian petroleum products that several governments built over two decades. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which import almost all of their fuel and rely on Russian suppliers for most of it, are already recording shortages and sharp price increases.
BACKGROUND:
The vulnerability reflects policy choices made since the 2000s, when several Central Asian governments sought stable fuel supplies through long-term arrangements with Russian companies. In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Gazprom Neft and affiliated firms built dominant positions across the import, storage, wholesale, and retail markets for gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel, reaching up to 90 percent in some segments. A weaker version of the same pattern developed in Uzbekistan. Privileged market access was expected to secure reliable supply at favorable prices and to draw investment into fuel infrastructure. In practice it narrowed competition and left the importing states dependent on a single supplier and a single source country for critical goods. Energy security in these markets became tied to conditions in Russia over which local governments have little influence.
In Dushanbe, diesel has become hard to find. Asia-Plus reported that it disappeared from several filling stations, including outlets run by Gazpromneft-Tajikistan, while others limited sales to 20 liters per customer. Prices moved within days, with AI-92 gasoline rising from 10.40 to 11.30 somoni per liter and diesel from around 11 to over 13 somoni. In Kyrgyzstan, Radio Azattyk recorded compressed gas at 45 soms per liter and a typical taxi fare climbing from about 1,200 to 1,700 soms, which cut driver incomes and raised household transport costs.
Kyrgyzstan drew roughly 90 percent of its gasoline imports from Russia well before the campaign began. In the first five months of 2026 Russian suppliers delivered more than 251,000 tons of gasoline, 235,100 tons of diesel, and 48,150 tons of aviation fuel, according to trader estimates cited by Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Tajikistan’s Ministry of Energy and Water Resources reported imports of more than 1.2 million tons of petroleum products and liquefied gas from Russia in 2025, above 70 percent of the total. Domestic output offers no substitute: Tajikistan produced 2,109 tons of gasoline and 3,111 tons of diesel in 2025.
IMPLICATIONS:
Bishkek was the first capital to ask for help, approaching Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan about possible deliveries as Russian supply grew uncertain. The Kyrgyz government maintains that reserves are adequate, yet the Association of Oil Traders has reported shortages of AI-95 and AI-98 and estimated that stocks cover 30 to 45 days at current consumption. It has removed price regulation on AI-95, letting prices adjust rather than risk empty pumps, and has opened talks with Chinese suppliers.
On July 8, the Tajik government stepped up its oversight of the fuel market, announcing stronger price monitoring for fuel and liquefied gas and setting up an intergovernmental working group under the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, joined by the ministries of energy, finance, and transport and by the antimonopoly, customs, and tax services. Reuters reported that Tajikistan holds roughly 60 days of fuel reserves and that imports reached 922,000 tons in the first half of 2026, 11 percent above a year earlier. Officials acknowledge that replacing Russian volumes will take time.
Uzbekistan is better diversified, yet the disruption has reached its aviation sector. Uzbekistan Airways reduced frequencies and cancelled flights to Russia because of a shortage of aviation kerosene, after Moscow banned jet fuel exports from June through November 30, 2026, and against an already tight global jet fuel market that followed the Iran conflict. The economist Otabek Bakirov has argued that reliance on Russian petroleum products is becoming a macroeconomic vulnerability and has called for diversified sourcing.
Kazakhstan holds the most complex position and increasingly functions as the region’s shock absorber. It runs three refineries and produces its own crude, but scheduled maintenance has narrowed its margin, with Shymkent in repair from March 27 to April 25 and Atyrau from June 26 to July 15, and Pavlodar due later in the year. Kazakhstan still imports around 1.2 million tons of petroleum products a year from Russia under the EAEU indicative balance, and the analyst Olzhas Baidildinov puts Russian supply at roughly 40 percent of Kazakh aviation fuel demand. As Russian retail prices climbed well above Kazakh levels, the price gap turned cross-border arbitrage into a domestic problem. Reuters reported on June 24 that Russia was in talks with Kazakhstan over about 50,000 tons of AI-92 gasoline, though Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said no formal request had arrived and that any supply would depend on domestic conditions. Kazakhstan has kept its road-export ban on gasoline and diesel in force until November 21, 2026, including to EAEU states, and the Energy Ministry has proposed extending it to May 22, 2027. The interior ministry has placed 59 posts near border crossings and, since the start of 2026, has recorded 255 vehicles fitted with concealed fuel tanks.
After the June 24 strike on the Orenburg gas processing plant, which handles Karachaganak’s raw gas under a long-standing joint arrangement, Kazakhstan cut liquid hydrocarbon output at the field from 34,000 to 25,000 tons per day, since the associated gas cannot be processed elsewhere at short notice. Around one-third of the country’s commercial gas is processed in Russia, so a strike on a plant inside Russia lowers output at a field inside Kazakhstan. The exposure runs through processing infrastructure as much as through fuel trade.
For Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan the effect will not stay in the fuel sector. Higher gasoline and diesel prices feed into transport, food, construction, and agriculture, and fall hardest on lower-income households in the region’s least buffered economies. The search for alternatives has begun, with Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, and China all under discussion, but substitution is a matter of rebuilding a supply chain rather than signing a contract. New suppliers require transport and storage arrangements, customs and certification procedures, and payment mechanisms, and several routes run longer and across more borders than the Russian one they would replace. Officials expect the alternatives to cost more.
CONCLUSIONS:
The strikes have turned a long-accumulating dependence into an immediate economic security problem. The exposure was structural before the war reached Russia’s refineries, and the campaign has made its cost visible across transport, aviation, and household budgets in the region’s least diversified economies. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan face the sharpest adjustment, Uzbekistan a narrower one centered on aviation, and Kazakhstan the task of shielding its own market while neighbors and Russia itself compete for its fuel. The outcome will turn on how fast these states can stand up alternative supply chains, since every substitute route carries higher cost and new logistics. China’s refining capacity and its proximity through Xinjiang make it the most plausible large substitute, which raises the prospect of exchanging dependence on one neighbor for dependence on another. The governments that widen their supplier base and strengthen competitive fuel markets soonest will be best placed to absorb the next shock, whatever its origin.
AUTHOR’S BIO:
Sobir Kurbanov is an international development expert and fellow at Nightingale Int. with over 20 years of experience in partnership-building, complex market reforms, program management, and teaching policy reform, public sector economics, and industrial policy across Eurasia. His expertise spans macroeconomic management, public sector governance, private sector development, trade, investment climate, infrastructure, and IF4D portfolio management, with a strong track record of working with bilateral and multilateral donors (SECO, DFID, USAID, IMF, WB, EU, UN), governments, CSOs, and think tanks, and leading cross-functional teams to advance evidence-based policy solutions.
Eldaniz Gusseinov is co-founder and Head of Research at Nightingale Int. and a non-resident fellow at Ibn Haldun University’s Haydar Aliyev Center for Eurasian Studies.