Now Russia and Ukraine are fighting it out on the gas station forecourt

By Nick Paton Walsh, Natalie Wright, Farida Elsebai, Luke Unger, CNN

(CNN) — The gas station was already aflame, when policeman Mykhailo Tsypliakov and his colleagues ran in to help. He heard the buzz of a second drone descending and hit the ground.

“I saw a flash, then got up right away,” Tsypliakov said. “I saw that my arm, legs and torso were injured.”

He’s one of dozens of victims of Russia’s latest campaign against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure: fuel stations. Over two hundred have been hit in June and July, which works out at about three a day, according to Ukrainian officials.

They’re aimed, Tsypliakov said, “to intimidate, to sow fear and panic. Panic is the scariest thing right now. Because when a person panics, they lose control of themselves.”

The attacks have concentrated on gas stations close to the front lines – and within easier reach of Russia’s attack drones. But airstrikes, longer distance drones and closer-range smaller attack UAVs have also added to the toll, hitting targets near the capital Kyiv.

Ukrainians see the Russian campaign as a bid to impose the same chaos seen at Russian gas stations, since repeated Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, that caused huge queues for fuel around Moscow and other major cities.

The widening Russian assault on civilian targets comes at a time when Western officials are warning of a possible escalation from Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to the toll of Kyiv’s long-range drone campaign against Russia’s industrial infrastructure.

Images of Russian delivery warehouses and refineries ablaze have punctured the veneer of safety Moscow has tried to maintain four years into the war. Russia has launched record numbers of ballistic missiles in recent weeks and June was the deadliest for Ukrainian civilians since 2022, the United Nations has reported.

A CNN analysis located and confirmed at least 30 videos of attacks on gas stations across the country in June and July.

Regina Kharchenko, acting mayor of Zaporizhzhia, said the city had been hit with 54 strikes targeting gas stations in a 24-day period until July 27. These strikes killed four and injured 29, she added.

“This is deliberate terrorism targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians,” said Kharchenko. “Russia is deliberately targeting facilities that have no military significance, but… are essential to the daily functioning of a big city.”

Zaporizhzhia city is increasingly within the range of Russian drones, whose range has extended further from the front line “kill zone” to enable Moscow’s attack craft to harass and kill inside a major population center.

Kramatorsk, a town in the Donbas increasingly close to Russia’s inch-by-inch advances, and Kharkiv, a city nearer the Russian border, are also heavily impacted.

In Ukraine, where commercial air travel is impossible and whose vast territory is connected by an enormous road and rail network, fuel stations have taken on an outsized value as a place where evacuees, soldiers, haulage drivers, can all pause, regroup and recuperate.

Yaroslav Starovoitenko, president of the Ukrainian Oil and Gas Association, said the Russian attacks were aimed at “intimidating” ordinary civilians. “Gas stations became these key points of refuge as people fled the war. Then Russia tried to cause an intentional blackout, cutting off electricity and heating to freeze us out in the winter.”

Fuel stations had generators, always on, he said. “These were places where people could drink hot tea, fill up their cars, warm up, and even prepare milk for their babies.”

A brief visit to a gas station outside Kyiv suggested the panic was far from universal. Serhiy joked he had been discharged from the military after being seriously wounded on the front line. “If a strike comes here, what’s the difference?”, he said. “It didn’t kill me on the front line, so it won’t kill me here.”

Vladyslav, a delivery driver, said: “No one knows where the attack will strike, and no one knows what will happen next. But I’m working. I can’t just not go.”

Another driver, Maksym, said “now there are no problems in Kyiv, but of course there will be if they keep destroying them.”

Moscow has paraded these attacks online. Russia’s elite drone unit, Rubicon, posted a video this month showcasing nine strikes on gas stations in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.

Ukrainian officials suggested the attacks were aimed at showing Russia was able to inflict similar disruption to Ukraine’s fuel supplies, as they had suffered from long-range Ukrainian targeting of their oil refineries.

“People used to joke that Russia is a ‘gas station country,’ but in reality, this ‘gas station country’ has run out of gas. We see huge lines at gas stations [in Russia].” He said the attacks were aimed at “showing their own people, ‘Look, it’s even worse in Ukraine.’”

Additional reporting by Daria Tarasova-Markina, Svitlana Vlasova, Kosta Gak and Victoria Butenko.

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