RU: Kremlin Lowers Party Targets

Kremlin adjusted goals include 190-210 single-mandate district seats for the party and a party-list result slightly below 50%, while still aiming to retain a constitutional majority of over 300 seats out of 450 with overall turnout around 50%. - - The changes come as ER's rating has fallen to 36% amid rising public anxiety, internet blocks, drone attacks on regions, and lower support for authorities, giving the regime a post-election window until 2030 federal votes. - - ***Note: Research Alert: Russia’s fuel problem has crossed the line from industrial damage into political risk as Crimea has halted all civilian fuel sales - - Ukraine is not trying to make Russia “run out of oil”; that would be impossible.

It is attacking the narrower, more fragile layer where crude becomes usable civilian power: primary distillation, reforming, hydrotreating, storage, product pipelines, bridge logistics, rail timetables and filling-station discipline.

That is why the Moscow refinery strikes matter so much.

The June 16 hit damaged CDU-6, around 53% of Kapotnya’s processing capacity; the June 18 follow-up damaged Euro+, the other key complex, around 47% of capacity, plus secondary units, inter-unit pipelines, auxiliary equipment and product tanks.

A refinery can sometimes restart after a fire.

It cannot quickly recover when the front-end crude unit, the clean-fuel upgrading units and the pipes between them are all part of the damage picture.

This is not a spectacular bonfire.

It is the slow removal of Russia’s ability to make the right fuel, in the right place, at the right quality, at the right political price. - - The hidden vulnerability is that Russia modernized some of these refineries into more efficient but more concentrated machines.

Kapotnya’s Euro+ complex, launched as a compact modern replacement for older units, raised output and improved quality, but also made critical capacity denser.

The more advanced the refinery, the more it depends on exactly the things sanctions make painful: licensed process designs, catalysts, analyzers, valves, control systems, compressors, heat-exchanger bundles, imported instrumentation and specialist repair chains.

Russian industry did not forget how to weld steel.

But the binding constraint is not crude metal; it is the high-value industrial ecology around modern gasoline and diesel.

That is why the government’s permission to sell fuel with Euro-3-like sulfur parameters is so revealing.

It says the country is not only short of volume.

It is short of clean, upgraded molecules.

In a petrostate, that is an ugly distinction: Russia can have oil, and still not have enough modern AI-95, diesel and jet fuel where the economy needs them. - - The local press is where the crisis becomes legible.

Federal statements say “no systemic deficit”; regional reporters find the rationing grammar of a deficit.

In St Petersburg, Tatneft limited sales to 20 litres of gasoline and 40 litres of diesel; later AI-92 and diesel were partly freed while AI-95 stayed capped at 30 litres, which is a much sharper signal than generic panic buying.

In Orenburg, almost all large networks moved into some form of restricted regime: Tatneft with 30 litres of gasoline or 40 litres of diesel for cars, 200 litres for trucks, Lukoil with 100 litres per cheque, Bashneft banning fuel in canisters.

In Tver region, the authorities admitted restrictions for private individuals at Surgutneftegaz and Tatneft, while corporate clients could refuel without limits.

In Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, local outlets found the same pattern: limits, empty grades, cash rumours, official calm.

This is the economics of queue management disguised as customer policy.

The most important phrase is not “no fuel”.

It is “for private individuals”. - - Moscow is the protected market, but even there the stress is leaking through prices.

In the Moscow region, AI-95 rose by 3.44 roubles per litre in one week, AI-92 by 3.87 roubles, and diesel by 3.33 roubles; in Moscow itself, growth accelerated several times compared with previous weeks.

The regulator then asked independent chains such as Trassa and Neftmagistral to justify prices, but the real story is wholesale scarcity, not retail greed.

Large vertically integrated companies can reserve fuel for their own stations; independent chains buy at the margin, and the marginal barrel is where the shortage reveals itself.

Belarusian gasoline on the Russian exchange was reportedly trading above 111,000 roubles per ton for AI-92, above 124,000 for AI-95, and 135,000-140,000 for summer diesel, far above Russian exchange indices.

Official prices can be smoothed.

Physical fuel cannot.

When exchange gasoline is cheap but almost impossible to get, the market has not calmed down; it has split into a visible official price and an invisible scarcity price. - - Crimea is the harshest version of the same national system.

On 21 June, fuel sales at Crimean filling stations were stopped from 9:00 not only for cash and bank cards, but even by coupons, for both individuals and companies; fuel was reserved only for state services responsible for life-support and security.

Sevastopol had already tested the future bureaucracy of shortage: QR codes in Max messenger, 20 litres per car, no canisters, validity windows, specific networks, and codes that became a rationing object of their own.

Crimea is uniquely exposed because its tourism and consumer economy depend on road, rail, bridge and ferry logistics more than most regions.

When the Kerch link or railway schedule is interrupted, fuel is not merely delayed; confidence collapses.

Hotel bookings in Crimea fell 31% year on year, Sevastopol 40%, cancellations hit 79% and 71% respectively, and some hotels began offering discounts, transfers or even petrol as a bonus.