This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
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This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Read original →At a meeting with Sverdlovsk Governor Denis Pasler in Minsk on May 18, Alexander Lukashenko proposed to "lend a shoulder" to Russian oil refining through two modernized Belarusian refineries. The channel has actually been operating for two years, but its capacity amounts to roughly 1% of Russia's monthly gasoline consumption.
The key statement from Alexander Lukashenko at his meeting with Sverdlovsk Region Governor Denis Pasler wasn't about the $2 billion trade turnover, or even about Sverdlovsk Region being a "Russia-forming" region. Though the trade figures are impressive in their own right—by the end of 2025, Belarus climbed from 5th-7th place to3rd placeamong Sverdlovsk Region's trading partners, with turnover approaching $930 million, and in Q1 2026 another $223.8 million with 2.6% growth. The substantive part of the statement was about oil refining.
The trigger wasn't trade statistics, but the campaign of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries. From January through October 2025, Ukrainian drones attacked at least 17 major Russian plants, according toReuters. Between August and October, attacks and scheduled maintenance combined took out up to 20% of capacity. In May 2026, refining collapsed to4.69 million barrels per day (bpd)—the lowest level since 2009.
The paradox is that Russia produces and exports crude oil with capacity to spare, but the bottleneck is precisely gasoline. Igor Yushkov, an analyst at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, explained this asymmetry to Argument Media.
Historically, about 50% of our diesel production goes to the domestic market and 50% is exported in a normal year when everything's operating properly. And in such a normal year, 90% of gasoline production went to the domestic market with only 10% exported. So if 10% of gasoline production goes down for maintenance, we're already on the edge of deficit.
In other words, a strike on one major refinery barely affects oil exports, but instantly shrinks the gasoline reserve. Diesel has far more cushion—half the output goes abroad anyway, so that portion can be redirected to the domestic market. Gasoline has no such buffer.
Lukashenko's statement isn't a one-off political gesture but rather the legitimization of an already functioning scheme. Since late 2022, the Mozyr refinery and Naftan (Novopolotsk) have been supplying fuel to the Russian exchange SPbMTSB through the state trader Promsyryeimport, which receives damper payments from the budget—initially as a replacement for the closed Ukrainian market. In 2025, the channel was reoriented toward a different objective: compensating for the drop in domestic supply.
Growth figures confirm this is no pilot project. According to data from the St. Petersburg International Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange, in October 2025 the volume of exchange trading in Belarusian gasoline increased47-foldyear-on-year—to 36,480 tons. In November, deliveries in the first 19 days exceeded the same period last year by a factor of seven. The head of the presidential administration of Belarus, Dmitry Krutoy, in Decemberconfirmedthat the refineries continue deliveries to Russia under the tolling scheme.
Yushkov points out that the scheme is mutually beneficial.
Supplying more oil to Belarus and producing more fuel at their refineries, then returning it back to the Russian market—that's the tolling scheme. We're loading up Belarusian refineries with work, pumping the oil through, and getting back petroleum products that saturate our domestic market.
Before 2022, Belarus purchased about 18 million tons of Russian oil per year. Six million went to the domestic Belarusian market, with another 12 million going to refining and re-export of petroleum products to EU countries. After European sanctions were introduced, this channel closed. The freed-up capacity is precisely the resource Lukashenko is pointing to today.
This is where the limits of the Belarusian resource begin. The combined design capacity of the two refineries is 24–28 million tons per year, with actual refining lower. Potential gasoline exports to Russiais estimatedat 3–4 million tons per year, equivalent to roughly one month's consumption in the Russian market. That's the ceiling—Minsk physically can't jump any higher.
In the moment, the picture is even more modest. According to anestimateby Kirill Bakhtin, head of the Russian equities center at BCS World of Investments, Belarusian gasoline sales on exchange trading in October 2025 amounted to about 1% of monthly consumption in Russia. Market participants interviewed by Expert clarify: Belarusian gasoline matters not so much in volume as in the very fact of its appearance in the order book. It's a "calming" signal for traders.
From a regulatory standpoint, this cushion is built into a broader framework. As of October 10, 2025, the EEC Councilzeroed outthe 5% import duty on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and marine fuel through June 30, 2026. The Russian governmentextendedthe ban on gasoline and diesel exports for traders through the end of 2025. Yushkov emphasizes that zeroing out the duty is primarily not about Belarus, but about the Far East.
In the Far East, it's unprofitable to import these products from Belarus. There it's more advantageous to buy fuel from neighboring countries, like China. That's why the zeroing out of import duties on gasoline and diesel works there too.
In other words, the architecture has two circuits. Western—Belarus, eastern—China and East Asian countries. These aren't alternatives, but separate geographic segments of a unified anti-crisis framework.
A parallel question is how much Russia can increase refining capacity domestically. Pavel Stroyev, Director of the Institute of Regional Economics and Intergovernmental Relations at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, outlines the framework in a comment to Argument Media.
Belarusian oil refining can serve as an additional stabilizing resource, especially for Russia's western and central regions... In broader sectoral terms, potential refining reserves are more closely tied to internal Russian capacities, including those located east of the Urals. The most significant sites remain Omsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo, and Tyumen oblasts, as well as Khabarovsk Krai.
However, this reserve is not freely available. Stroyev immediately identifies the constraints. "Here we're talking more about a heterogeneous set of possibilities, limited by the utilization rates of existing refineries, maintenance schedules, access to crude, and the throughput capacity of railway infrastructure, which needs to be expanded."
This aligns with industry data. Russia's total refining capacity of around 6.6 million b/d is almost never fully utilized, and refinery reserves always involve a trade-off between maintenance and load. Yushkov describes the current regime more starkly: "everything here is already operating at maximum—production is maxed out, refining is also at maximum." In other words, the internal eastern reserve is neither a quick nor cheap option. Unlocking it requires long-term infrastructure investment in railways.
And this is where Sverdlovsk Oblast transforms from a news hook into a rhetorical device. The Urals is a region with its own oil refining capacity and logistically gravitates more toward the eastern circuit. Belarusian fuel physically arrives at western and central markets, and that's where it provides a "calming" effect.
Yushkov explicitly dismisses the geographic connection: "there's no point in tying this specifically to Sverdlovsk Oblast or to the governor. Lukashenko simply seized on the occasion—a meeting with a Russian governor—to signal that Russia has a problem and a risk of fuel shortages due to strikes on refineries."
In other words, Minsk isn't helping Sverdlovsk Oblast—it's signaling to Moscow its readiness to remain part of the Union State's fuel architecture at a time when internal Russian reserves fall short. The statement about doubling trade turnover is window dressing. The substance is about continuing the tolling scheme and cementing Belarusian refineries' role as a first-tier stabilizer.