Russian refining nosedives —Bloomberg

Russians are withdrawing capital from the banking system apace.

Interfax reports that 126.2 billion rubles will be taken from the liquid assets of the National Wealth Fund and transferred to the airline industry. It’s not clear when the drawdown will occur, but they just took another 92 billion for Rostec 🤣🤣

I am sad. Tonight’s only documented successful attack on Russia was the Mikhaelovsky oil depot in Stavropol Krai. It’s still on fire.

The lights in Crimea are still out. 1st pic: June 14 2nd pic: July 5 3rd pic: July 10

The oil refinery in Syzran, Russia is on fire 🔥

The blogger in Crimea complains he still has no electricity, and VTB imposed withdrawal limits at ATMs. The limits are so low, it’s worth about two tanks of gas.

1\ Some observations of first half Russian "consolidated" budget data, Jan-June 2026 vs 2025: Domestic VAT growth is very very strong: +30% or +1.53tr rub vs 2025 Corporate, import and excise taxes weak. Near ~0%. Income related taxes + social contributions pretty strong so far, +15% or so.

‼️ Crimeans are paying $13.29 a gallon for gasoline (269 rubles per liter). What costs $50 in the U.S. to fill up would cost $180 at that price. Just insane. I’m trying to get a new satellite image of the peninsula at night, but it’s been cloudy. Very curious to see if the lights stayed off too.

Russia’s National Wealth Fund, for the first time ever, will have less than half of its reserves in liquid assets than needed to cover the budget deficit this year. I’m projecting a ~12 trillion ruble deficit (federal or consolidated) this year.

Russia has “temporarily” closed the Kerch Strait due to Ukrainian strikes on ships in the area. The logistics blockade is being extended to the sea! www.reuters.com/business/rpt...

The Russian port of Taganrog was visited by Ukrainian drones 🔥

Financial Genius predicts the federal budget deficit to be a whopping 11 trillion rubles this year. dzen.ru/a/alCvdY415w...

A bipartisan group of Senators announced a sanctions deal with the White House. More sanctions and tariffs are coming for those who buy Russian oil and gas. 🍿

The Moscow Index sank yet again, this time by 2.1%. Closes out a horrid week for the exchange.

The Moscow Index shrank another 1.5% today, erasing all of yesterday’s gains and then some.

The deficit shrank a bit from 6 trillion rubles last month. Likely due to higher non-oil and gas revenues thanks to large budget expenditures prior to June, and the war in Iran. It should be all downhill from here…

LNG prices on the St Petersburg exchange are going vertical.

Russia’s Saratov oil refinery has suspended operations following a successful Ukrainian strike, Reuters reports.

I am so excited for June’s budget execution report from the Russian Ministry of Finance. It should be horrible. 🍿

Ukraine hit an oil depot in Tver.

Electricity has been cut off to the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts. ⚡️

Crimea is slipping, no ⚡️💧📱📶🚍 Some examples "There has been no electricity for 4 days already, water is turned on for about three hours closer to the evening and even then it's rusty, not drinking water" 🧵 1/2

A Crimean blogger complains he has no electricity, water, internet, and mobile phone service. t.me/fingeniycom/...

Wow!!!! Russia’s central bank issued 6.210 trillion rubles in emergency REPO loans to Russian banks, an absolute record!! Demand at 8.196 trillion rubles was also a record, by far. Russian banks are absolutely starved for liquidity. Russians continue to withdraw money from the banking system.

Russia’s treasury balance is off to a low start in July. The trend is heading towards a <3.5 trillion ruble floor, the first such floor since the full scale invasion began.

The Russian government has banned exports of diesel now. That means that at least 40% of refining capability has been taken offline. Diesel shortages will have much more severe impacts than gasoline shortages. The summer is young and the campaign against Russia’s oil industry continues.🍿

The CIA is helping Ukraine strike Russian oil refineries at an unprecedented rate. Nizhnekamsk is below. CIA is giving Ukraine the most hard-to-replace parts of the refineries to destroy or damage. The campaign is bringing refineries offline for weeks or months at a time.

Look at all those migrant workers!

The power is back on in Yevpatoria, Crimea. It seems only Simferopol, Sevastopol, and Yevpatoria have power.

Russian oil is accumulating at sea as Russia has a hard time finding buyers. Its oil is sold at a deep discount again. -Bloomberg

Tomorrow’s bond auction has been cancelled, again. 🍿 Russia is having a hard time raising debt now.

Crimea is largely dark again, with Simferopol and Sevastopol notable exceptions. Image dated July 6, 2026.

The halt in operations at the plant, which is Russia's top producer of gasoline, is likely to exacerbate fuel shortages across the country.

This should be a bustling resort town in Crimea. But without electricity, there are no tourists and no businesses. Alushta is a ghost town thanks to Ukrainian drones.

Very very bad news for Russia! The Saudis made their largest price cut to Asian buyers since the 1998 crisis. They slashed prices by $11 a barrel. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The price of Urals oil is back down in the dumps: last week, it came in at $41.66, according to Bloomberg citing Argus data.

The collapse of the Russian stock market continues. The Moscow Index fell another 2.3% today!

Ukraine hit 3 Russian refineries today: the Perviy refinery, the Yaroslavl refinery, and the Omsk refinery. 🔥

‼️ Dnipro OSINT says: “Modernized FP-1 UAVs struck the ELOU-AVT-11 unit of the Omsk Refinery, over 2500 km from the border. Hits on the technological columns of the unit were recorded. The unit's capacity is 8.4 million tons of oil per year. Coordinates: 55.069616° 73.209359°”

Gasoline is $8/gallon in Sevastopol.

June 14, 2026 and July 5, 2026. Crimea.

Due to a Ukrainian attack, there is now no electricity in Sevastópol, Crimea. Note the dates on the images below. The situation has gotten even worse.

In Krasnodar kray due to the shortage of fuel the delivery of food has been impacted and this has led bread running out in both major super market chains and in small independent stores. Fresh bread is usually the first to go due to it often being baked in a close proximity.

We’ve go a lot discuss, like the fact that Russia actually sold over 9 TONS of gold this month, and it looks like they gave ALL of the proceeds to Rostec. I’m going to try to walk through this slowly because I know it might get confusing.

This is so far the clearest view of the burning oil terminal in Saint Petersburg, Russia. At least two major fires are raging in the oil facility.

Russians continue to withdraw cash from their banking system apace.

The Moscow Index sank again today to recent lows.

Russia has almost entirely stopped exporting diesel, per RBC. Wholesale domestic prices are so high due to Ukrainian drone strikes that it’s more profitable to sell diesel domestically.

Ms. Ostanina prefers that the Russian state take over the refining industry, a measure I also support. 😈