"Ukraine's most effective campaign". Russia starts talking about a ban on diesel exports

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries have pushed Russia's diesel exports to their lowest level since 2020, the Financial Times reports . Russia's TASS news agency reported that the country has begun discussing a complete ban on diesel exports by the end of the year.

For the past several months, Russia has been banning gasoline exports, but has not yet restricted diesel sales abroad.

Since the beginning of August 2025, 16 of Russia's 38 refineries have been hit, some of them several times. The strikes have disrupted refining capacity by more than 1 million barrels per day, according to the Energy Aspects research group.

Diesel exports, if the current pace continues, will fall to the lowest monthly figure since 2020 in September, according to OilX and Vortexa, which track cargo shipments.

"This seems to be the most effective campaign that Ukraine has run," said Benedict George, head of European oil pricing at Argus, a company that reports commodity prices.

Russia is the second largest exporter of diesel fuel in the world, with about half of its cargo going to Turkey. Turkey has already turned to India and Saudi Arabia to compensate for the deficit.

Inside Russia, there is no shortage of diesel fuel yet, as its production exceeds domestic demand by more than 50%. Diesel fuel is the main fuel for the agricultural sector and is used by the occupation forces in the war against Ukraine.

• Russia's revenues from the sale of crude oil and petroleum products in August 2025 fell to one of the lowest levels since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported earlier.
• IEA estimated that in August, Russian oil and petroleum product exports fell by 70,000 barrels per day to 7.3 million barrels. Of these, crude oil supplies decreased by 30,000 barrels per day and petroleum products by 40,000.