And the problem is huge. Independent Russian website The Moscow Times reported that the losses were a result of the fire. can be comparable to the annual budget of… an average Russian city.
The burning fuel depot consists of 74 tanks with a capacity of 5,000 tons each. As calculated by Jarosław Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, the total cost of fuel stored in Proletarsk is approximately $200 million. If we convert this to Russian currency, we are talking about approximately 18 billion rubles..
A summary from the Russian Ministry of Finance shows that this amount is comparable to the annual budget of cities like Eagle (14.6 billion rubles), Kursk (16.4 billion rubles) or Izhevsk (21.4 billion rubles). Moreover, it is 1.5 times larger than the annual budget, e.g. Smolensk (12 billion rubles) or Ivanova (11.1 billion rubles).
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kiev has repeatedly attacked Russian oil and gas industry facilitiesclaiming this “just retaliation” for Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
The Ukrainian attacks appear to be working. On Wednesday, the Russian government announced that reintroduces ban on gasoline exports for the next six months (from September 1 to December 31 of this year). Reason? “To maintain stable prices during a period of sustained seasonal demand and planned repairs at oil refineries.”
Russia already introduced a similar six-month ban on gasoline exports in March. It suspended it between May and July, claiming that the domestic market was saturated.