Russia in meltdown: Empty petrol pumps, battlefield humiliation and warnings of an uprising as net closes in on scrambling Putin… amid warnings he may do the unthinkable

As Ukrainian attacks continue to hammer away at Russia’s critical infrastructure, Vladimir Putin’s allies are pushing him to consider the unthinkable.

The battlefield humiliations have grown so profound that Kremlin hardliners are lobbying their leader to deploy nuclear weapons, against both Ukrainian frontline positions and European nations lending their support to Volodymyr Zelensky.

The tipping point before Putin chooses the deadly escalation would be the loss of the cherished Crimea, according to experts, where authorities recently declared a state of emergency. 

Speculation is mounting that Ukraine’s next target will be the 12-mile Crimean Bridge – bombed several times already but still standing. 

A decisive blow to the highly symbolic feat of architecture could compound Putin’s fears that Russia is facing a threat to its territorial integrity, propelling him towards escalation.

The 73-year-old dictator was forced to swallow his pride and admit for the first time last weekend that his country is suffering from gas shortages, as Kyiv relentlessly pummels logistics chains and oil facilities.

Amid a crumbling economy and surging soldier fatalities, Russians are becoming more outspoken with their criticism of the Kremlin, from distressed influencers weeping online about not being able to locate petrol, to disgruntled war veterans.

Forbes has predicted that Putin now has only three years left before he is toppled, drawing the curtain on almost three decades of power.

Shocking footage is flooding out of Russia showing desperate motorists brawling in queues at petrol stations, as the fight for fuel reaches a breaking point.

In Moscow, two women waiting in a queue were filmed screaming at each other after one accused the other of cutting in line. 

‘**** you! I’ll smash your face in!’ one of them can be heard shouting.

In another video from Serov, a woman is seen with a bloodied nose after a man allegedly punched her in a scrap over gas.

Currently, 56 Russian regions are enforcing fuel restrictions, in a sign that Kyiv’s plan is working.

Last week, Zelensky announced he had approved a 40-day drone campaign to ‘compel’ Russia to end its war against Ukraine, ​now in its fifth year.

Throughout June, Kyiv has ​hit ⁠11 oil refineries, as well as fuel logistics facilities, military factories, and other targets.

Last week, Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s major Ufa oil refinery for the second time in a week.

The Ufa refinery is one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants and is located more than 1,000 kilometres from Ukraine, Zelensky said in a post on X.

‘This is an entirely just response to everything Russia is doing against us. Peace is needed, and this is exactly what Russia’s leadership must realise,’ he wrote.

The drone blitz has forced Putin into publicly acknowledging that the country was suffering from ‘a certain shortage’ of fuel, in a rare acceptance of vulnerability. 

‘As for strikes against critical infrastructure in general, and energy infrastructure in particular, of course these attacks on our infrastructure facilities create problems, that’s obvious,’ Putin said in an interview published by the Kremlin.

‘Right now we’re observing a certain shortage, but it’s not critical,’ he caveated.

In Crimea, Putin admitted, only ‘a few days’ supply’ was left – but said he was ‘confident’ more fuel would be brought in soon. 

There, Russians only have one last conduit for fuel supplies: the Crimean Bridge, the only road and rail link that connects the diamond-shaped peninsula to mainland Russia.

The queues of gasoline trucks present a ripe target for the Ukrainians, ensuring a hellish fireball should they be hit in a strike. 

While Zelensky is unlikely to seize the military base, he may be able to cut it off entirely.

Putin’s admission of the difficulties being felt in Crimea – from where he launched the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine – is particularly significant, given the symbolic importance of the peninsula to many Russians, and to the Kremlin leader in particular. 

Tourism, key to Crimea’s economy in a normal year, has collapsed, with hordes of Russians finding themselves stuck in traffic jams in their mission to escape.

Ukraine’s recent success with drone strikes that keep Moscow’s troops paralysed on the front line, disrupt Russian supply lines in the rear and pummel oil facilities has brought a significant shift in the war, Western analysts say.

‘Russia’s spring-summer 2026 offensive has failed to achieve operationally significant gains thus far, and Russian forces’ rate of advance in June 2026 [was] a fraction of the rate of advance that Russian forces achieved in June 2025,’ the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment late Wednesday.

As the Russian war machine falters, the country’s most powerful banker has broken ranks to call on Putin to stop fighting.

German Gref heads the state-controlled Sberbank, by far the country’s largest financial institution.

Amid rising economic chaos, deepened by Ukraine’s strikes on oil refineries, Gref said Russians are deeply concerned about the war’s impact, which Putin refuses to stop.

‘I think what’s worrying every one of us is one and the same thing,’ he told state TV in a blunt message.

‘I don’t think there’s a single person who isn’t concerned about anything other than a rapid end of hostilities, that’s clear.’ 

A former senior minister, it is unprecedented for prominent Russian officials to publicly voice demands for an end to the four-and-a-half year war.

Putin-appointed Gref made clear the war with its high military spending is leading to havoc in the economy which is suffering from petrol queues, falling wages, redundancies, soaring prices and cripplingly high interest rates.

He warned Putin: ‘We have already overcooled the economy.’

Gref spoke as a poll showed 81 per cent of Russians want the war to end, the highest since the conflict began, according to the Kyiv-based Russian Institute for Conflict Study and Analysis.

While state polls must be taken with a grain of salt considering dissent can land Russians in prison, a recent one by the Kremlin-friendly FOM (Public Opinion Foundation) garnered interesting results.  

The poll of 1,500 people of voting age across 51 Russian regions found that 69 per cent of respondents trusted Putin – a drop of five percentage points from June 14. 

This was the lowest level for the Russian leader since the start of his full-scale invasion and a slump from the 82 per cent he enjoyed a year ago.

In Russia, online searches for ‘how to siphon fuel’ rose to more than ⁠9,300 by June 21 from 697 a month earlier, website iPhones.ru said, citing Yandex data. 

In one video circulating online, entitled ‘The Ultimate Luxury 2026,’ a man slowly pours petrol into his lawnmower from a ​jerry can and jokes: ‘What riches. Who can afford this now?’

As dissent rises, Putin is relying on the traditional Russian playbook to censor dangerous voices and retain the status quo.

In June, a viral video by military veteran Alexander Lunin amassed over 12 million views ⁠in 24 hours.

In it, he accused Russian commanders in Ukraine of torturing and murdering soldiers ‌for not fulfilling ‘suicidal orders’ and demanded a face-to-face meeting with the Kremlin dictator to tell him about the barbaric abuses.

Lunin recorded his ​video wearing combat ​fatigues and lots ⁠of medals. He said that if he did not get a personal audience with Putin on live TV soon, ​the army would turn its guns on the Kremlin. 

‘At the moment, tens, hundreds of thousands of our soldiers are sitting in pits, punished by their commanders,’ he said.

‘They are sitting there, rotting, being subjected to torture and violence by the so-called Gestapo, because they refused to carry out stupid, suicidal orders.’

The Kremlin initially responded, saying it would look into the ‘strange’ video.

Lunin has since been arrested, his home was searched, and his family was ordered not to give interviews.

His remarks came almost exactly three years after the Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin led an abortive mutiny in which Russian troops marched toward the capital, in what was seen as the biggest challenge to Putin in over a quarter-century in power. 

Two months after he abruptly halted the advance, Prigozhin was killed in a plane explosion that is widely understood to have been an assassination.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that between 400,000 and 450,000 Russian troops have been killed since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, out of a total of 1.4 million casualties, including those killed, wounded or are missing. 

The Ukrainian army meanwhile has suffered between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities out of between 525,000 and 625,000 casualties during the same period.

‘Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all US fatalities in all wars combined since World War Two,’ CSIS said, while the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian casualties has likely risen to about eight to one in the first half of 2026.

While Russia’s poor performance in the war is encouraging criticism among some brave voices, Kremlin hardliners are more galvanised than ever. 

Independent Russian news outlet The Bell reported last week that a tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine has growing support within Putin’s inner circle. 

One regime insider said that the ‘prospect of using tactical nuclear weapons is approaching’.

It comes as Kremlin-run newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by the prominent military expert Yuri Knutov, calling for the deployment of ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons against Ukrainian frontline positions.

Sergey Karaganov, a former adviser to Putin and head of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy think-tank in Moscow, went a step further, calling for ‘limited’ nuclear strikes on European nations that support Kyiv’s war effort.

Meanwhile, Moscow’s nuclear doctrine states clearly that atomic bombs can be used in case of an ‘existential threat’ to the country.

As Putin’s popularity continues to dwindle and Russians call out for change, the dictator finds himself at a crossroads.

He can finally listen to Zelensky’s repeated calls for peace, or double down, choosing to intensify his military campaign.

And while his country is clearly ready for a change in direction, the Russian dictator is showing no signs of giving up on his ambitions.

On Monday, the Kremlin said Russia had not changed its stance on the ​conditions needed for a peace deal since 2024 – when Putin demanded that Kyiv’s forces withdraw from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Russia claims the regions as its own, something Kyiv rejects as an illegal land grab.

In the meantime, Kyiv’s forces have destroyed over 70 air-defence systems – more than many countries possess in total – and inflicted losses that will take Moscow years to replace. 

Putin may continue to ignore Zelensky’s efforts to end the war, but with his country on the brink of crisis, it might cost him. 

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Keir Giles, a Russian expert with the Chatham House think tank, said: ‘Ukraine has regained the initiative in the war… it is no longer on the back foot as a passive punch bag to receive Russian attacks.

‘That is putting Russia and Putin under pressure, in precisely the way that the long-term Ukrainian strategy intended.’

However, he stopped short of taking seriously the nuclear threats coming out of the Kremlin, calling the comments ‘nonsense’ from ‘the usual Russian mouth-pieces’.

Such rhetoric is intended to put pressure on Ukraine’s allies in the West and to deter them from supporting Zelensky’s war effort, he says.

‘There is no reason to think it should be any more successful this time around than on any previous occasion.

‘Time is slowly running out for Russia. The question remains whether Putin recognises this and is going to respond accordingly. The imperative for Western countries is to, as ever, continue the support for Ukraine in order that the threat from Russia can be reduced.’