Expert: Russian petrol export ban will not affect the Ukrainian market
28 February 2024 10:02
The ban on petrol exports, which will be introduced in Russia on 1 March, will not affect the Ukrainian and European markets. This opinion was expressed in an exclusive commentary to Kommersant Ukrainian 
was expressed by Gennadiy Ryabtsev, Director of Special Projects at Psyche, in an exclusive interview with Kommersant Ukrainsky.
“There is zero share of Russian petrol on the Ukrainian and European markets. This is prohibited by the sanctions regime that was introduced on 5 February last year. We had no Russian petrol at all, even before the war. We had diesel fuel, we had liquefied petroleum gas, but we didn’t have petrol because it was not economically viable. It is logical that this decision does not mean a new crisis at petrol stations and petrol shortages, for example, as in early 2022,”
– the expert said.
In Russia, he said, the increase in petrol exports has led to a shortage in the domestic market.
“The ban on the export of Russian petrol is aimed at meeting the needs of the central region of the Russian Federation in this type of fuel due to the situational shortage of this resource. In an attempt to fulfil the task of the federal government of the Russian Federation to maintain the volume of exports of oil crude and oil products, everything that could be exported was directed to export. Russian oil companies are rapidly increasing these volumes, and it turns out that the domestic market lacks this resource, and then some unknown drones arrived. And to avoid what happened with the eggs at the end of last year, the Russian government decided to re-enable manual regulation,”
– explained Gennady Ryabtsev.
On 1 March, Russia introduced a ban on petrol exports that will be in effect for six months. This coincided with a series of drone attacks on Russian refineries – there have been 4 such attacks since the beginning of 2024. After that, the price of petrol rose significantly on the Russian market.
