Inside Crimea: fuel shortages, nightly air raids, and a peninsula cut off from Russia

Ukraine's military campaign to sever Crimea from Russia has produced a severe fuel crisis, power outages, and disrupted the tourist season on the peninsula. A Meduza correspondent who spent several days in Crimea in June 2026 found residents rationing petrol, bracing for nightly drone alerts, and deeply ambivalent about both Russia and Ukraine. On Friday, 26 June, Russian-administered Crimea declared a state of emergency.

Crimea, June 2026, A state of emergency was declared across Russian-administered Crimea on Friday, 26 June, as Ukraine's sustained drone and missile campaign brought the peninsula to the brink of a full blockade. Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov had promised that Ukrainian forces would soon sever Crimea from the Russian mainland, turning the annexed peninsula into an "island." On the ground, that promise is already half-fulfilled.

A Peninsula Running on Empty

The fuel crisis had been building since spring. By May, Sevastopol was selling no more than 20 litres per customer. Authorities promised to fix the situation within a month, but drone strikes kept hitting supply routes, and the situation only worsened. After a large-scale Ukrainian strike on the night of 20-21 June, petrol sales were suspended entirely, only municipal services are now permitted to refuel.

Those who still need to move around are turning to black-market dealers. «At the touts you pay 200-300 roubles per litre in little jerrycans, that's how we live,» one Crimean driver told Meduza, noting that the price was four to five times what it was before the crisis. Cars have largely disappeared from city streets; residents are posting videos of themselves using horses instead of vehicles.

One woman said she filled a full tank during a brief lull when no attacks occurred for a few days, and has not used the car since. «This is definitely not going to end tomorrow, it's not going to end in a week, and I need a full tank so that if anything happens, I can get to the bridge and somehow cross to the mainland,» she explained.

Sevastopol, Hollowed Out

A Meduza freelance correspondent who spent several days in Crimea in June 2026 found Sevastopol visually unchanged but spiritually altered. Identical banners celebrating «12 years of development» hang across the city, yet the Historic Boulevard, a centrepiece attraction, has been fenced off for eight years of scandal-plagued renovations. The Sevastopol Defence Panorama, one of the city's most cherished landmarks, was badly damaged in a Ukrainian drone strike earlier in June 2026.

Former hotels stand empty. Rusted cars with Ukrainian licence plates sit on roadsides. Faded Beeline adverts priced in Ukrainian hryvnias linger on noticeboards. One resident, who has spent his entire life in Crimea and changed his citizenship from Ukrainian to Russian in 2014, showed the correspondent around the city. «The city had a soul, and now it doesn't. Just a corpse,» he said.

A younger resident, 26 years old at the time of the 2014 annexation, reflected on the consequences: «I was 13 in 2014. I remember thinking it was cool, you change countries without leaving your flat. But now I have only a Russian passport, and I'm the person who is under every possible sanction just because of where I was born.»

Nightly Alerts, Earthquake, Power Cuts

Every night the correspondent was in Crimea, an air-raid siren sounded. Residents say they have become so attuned to the sound of drones that even moped engines now trigger a visceral alarm. In mid-June authorities banned mopeds and motorcycles from operating at night. The massive strike on 20-21 June hit the Kerch crossing and naval ports, killed people, and caused power outages across the peninsula. Sevastopol lost electricity and residents were told to conserve even phone battery charge.

A winemaker who has lived in Crimea her whole life described the atmosphere: «You're just existing inside an art-house film. What's next, UFOs? Plague? The Loch Ness monster in the Black Sea?» She recalled an April drone raid when her house «shook like it was in an earthquake», and then an actual earthquake followed days later. Yet she has decided not to leave: she makes wine once a year, and that yearly attempt on her home soil is reason enough to stay.

Russia Day with Nothing to Celebrate

On Russia Day, 12 June, Sevastopol's streets were half-empty. Tricolour flags were barely visible. «What's there to celebrate?» an elderly pensioner near a local cinema told Meduza. «These made-up holidays mean nothing to me. We are Sebastopolitans. Write that down.»

A man walking toward the embankment agreed: people were not strolling or celebrating, they were staying home. «On Victory Day it's different: people wait for it, gather. Today they're just lying at home. Thanks for the extra day off, and that's it.»

"Patriotism for Crimea, Not for Russia"

The residents Meduza spoke to repeatedly drew the same distinction: they consider themselves patriots, but of Crimea, not of Russia. Many were genuinely hurt by the Ukrainian strike on the Sevastopol Defence Panorama, which happened just before Russia Day. «We respected them, we share history. I won't forgive this. Though I do feel sorry for them too,» one man said, his voice rising nearly to a shout.

Yet most Crimeans refused to believe the peninsula would genuinely become a full "island" in the near term, while quietly acknowledging they were preparing for exactly that scenario, «just in case.» The tourist season, normally the economic lifeline of the peninsula, has effectively collapsed: most visitors have cancelled, some who arrived found themselves stranded, and children from the Artek camp were evacuated.

Ukraine's campaign has, in the space of a few weeks, turned the road to Crimea into what analysts describe as a «death road», AI-guided drones making a corridor dangerous up to 100 kilometres from the front line. Whether Russia can respond effectively to the tactic remains an open question as Crimea heads into an uncertain summer.