«Our country is unpredictable». How the fuel crisis is affecting a town that can only be reached by road

The crossing over the Sheksna River connects the city of Belozersk and the village of Lipin Bor in Vologda Oblast. For the second month now, Monday mornings for the drivers of the Belozersk hospital begin here — on the way to get gasoline. The regional Ministry of Health, which oversees the hospital, ordered them to refuel at the nearest Lukoil station — 48 kilometers from the institution.

In July, residents of Belozersk, Vologda Oblast, were forced to drive 120 kilometers to the nearest major city — Cherepovets — to fill up their cars. At the beginning of the month, Vologda Oblast Governor Georgy Filimonov said that “the fuel situation has stabilized”. Now there is gasoline in Belozersk: “steadily” at 120 rubles per liter. That is more than twice as expensive as before the start of the massive AFU strikes on Russian oil refineries.

“At the ministry they looked at the map and said: ‘From Belozersk it’s 40 kilometers to the village of Lipin Bor, go refuel there. If not, then on the way in Cherepovets,’” says ambulance mechanic Andrey. “On Friday I took a patient to Cherepovets, and I only filled up at the fourth station, can you imagine. Well, it’s okay, maybe everything will get sorted out. In the 30 years I’ve worked here, there have been worse times… our country is unpredictable”.

There are only three gas stations in Belozersk, and all of them resell fuel from federal chains, continuing to charge double or even triple prices: 120–150 rubles per liter. The administration does not comment on the situation.

***

Cyclists of all ages race along the embankment by the Belozersk Canal, while crooked wooden houses flash by. On the other side of the canal, through the trees, Lake Beloye is visible — the jewel of this city, to which crowds of tourists head to Belozersk on weekends.

Belozersk is an ancient city. Traditionally, its founding is dated to 862 — the date of the founding of Rus. According to The Tale of Bygone Years, when Rurik was invited to rule, one of the two brothers, Prince Sineus, took the throne right here. The city is famous for its 500-year-old kremlin, ancient churches, and fishing industry.

A gang of boys runs headlong into the canal — straight from the house across the street. Their grandmother hurries after them.

- Are you отдыхаете here?

- I came to bathe the children. They splash around here twenty times a day.

- And where are you from?

- From St. Petersburg [distance to Belozersk — 633 km — Most Media]. We have an apartment here, we come to отдыхать. Everyone says this is the best place on earth.

- And for you?

- Well, if you mean the beach, then yes.

On Saturday, the parking lot by the beach cannot cope with the influx of cars. Andrey, the security guard at Belozersk port, keeps peeking out from behind the fence, anxiously watching the growing rows of cars. At the beginning of July, at the height of the fuel crisis, there were practically no tourists, and those who did make it got stuck in the city with empty tanks. That is why the return of vacationers to the beach seems significant to Andrey.

The permanent population of Belozersk — a prosperous port city in Soviet times — is now just under eight thousand, and that number is shrinking every year. In addition to large-scale timber transport, Belozersk Port handled passenger transport and ship repairs. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the enterprise began to wither rapidly. In 2014, the port passed into private ownership of the St. Petersburg company LLC “Belozerskoye Parokhodstvo”.

“I can’t say anything good… before there were five or six steamships here. In the morning, people come and go — you open the gates, and cars keep driving in. And now there’s one person in accounting. There’s basically no one here. Navigation season is over”, says Andrey.

The favorite memory of Belozersk residents is riding on Meteors, Soviet high-speed hydrofoils, from Belozersk to Vologda and Cherepovets. According to locals, the last Meteors stopped running between the cities in the early 2000s. Now you can get to Belozersk either by car or by bus from Cherepovets.

Meanwhile, port management is preparing another round of cuts: “Some of our ships are going to be laid up because of the fuel shortage”, Andrey says. “That’s it, there’ll be no work”.

Because of the threat of mobilization, Andrey is thinking about returning to work as a security guard at the “pyatak” — that is what they call Penal Colony No. 5 on Ognenny Island for life-sentenced prisoners: “At least there’s a ‘reservation’ there, they won’t take you away from there”. Asked about the upcoming State Duma elections in September, Andrey says he will most likely go vote (he won’t say for whom), but he can’t plan that far ahead: “Before, I could plan something — vacation in September, say. But now I don’t plan anything anymore. Today I’m on shift, and tomorrow I don’t know what will happen”.

***

They say public transport once ran through Belozersk, but now the bus stops are used by locals mostly for drinking alcohol, and the city bus station building has been bought by a private individual, with part of it rented by the Bristol store. You can get anywhere either by taxi or by hitchhiking. A cheerful young woman without front teeth advised voting near the “three condoms” — that is what Vologda residents call the identical murals at the entrances to the cities of Vologda Oblast, installed on the governor’s orders.

Andrey and Tatyana from Belozersk are heading to the lake to swim. Andrey — a smiling, sturdy guy — works in the transport service of Russian Railways in St. Petersburg on a rotational schedule. A week there, a week at home. Asked why he doesn’t move permanently to the northern capital, he says home is better. Tatyana — a tired, slender woman in a yellow dress just above the knee — works as a kindergarten teacher in the local nursery school. Asked about life in Belozersk, she says bluntly: “Everything is bad here. Everyone who comes is surprised: utilities are twice as expensive as in neighboring cities and villages, and salaries are minimum wage”. According to the information portal Trudko.ru, the average salary in the city is 38,500 rubles.

Indeed, heating tariffs in Belozersk are among the highest in Vologda Oblast. According to locals, in winter, for a two-room apartment, residents can pay up to 10,000 rubles for heat alone, whereas in the regional capital, Vologda, the price ranges from 1,500 to 3,500 rubles. In addition to logistical factors, the price is affected by dilapidated housing, which increases heat consumption in apartments.

- Where do you refuel? — I ask.

- We refuel right here — at one-twenty, — Andrey replies.

- Why don’t the city authorities regulate gasoline prices in any way?

- Who can make sense of who’s in that administration now? They send a new one every six months, — says Tatyana.

- Why is that?

- One stole enough, so they brought in the next one, — Andrey adds with irony.

Since mid-2025, the district head has changed twice already. The latest — Yury Zhavoronkov — took office in July this year, replacing Dmitry Dolbilov, who had originally been elected for a five-year term. He did not respond to a journalistic request for comment.

Economist Anna Senina clarifies that regional authorities do not have direct leverage over independent gas stations, although they can negotiate with them and cooperate with the FAS to regulate prices. “During crisis periods, government bodies can reach agreements with certain large chains to restrain prices in priority cities or districts, while independent gas stations remain outside such agreements. FAS. Regional authorities can issue warnings to specific gas stations for overpricing, but these are targeted measures that do not equalize the whole market”, the expert explains.

***

On the lake island, 20 kilometers from Belozersk, stands a time-worn church-lighthouse — a lonely witness to the flooded villages of Belozerye. For the past 18 years, this building has been preserved by the founder of the Krokhino Foundation, Anor Tukaeva. Anor, a Moscow resident originally from Ufa, first came to Lake Beloye in the late 2000s, when she was 24, and fell in love with these places. Since then, she has devoted her life to conserving the church and preserving the memory of the villages flooded in 1961 during the filling of the Sheksna Reservoir. Anor’s project is well known nationwide: in 2013, her story was included in Leonid Parfyonov’s film “The Color of the Nation”, and in 2026 — in the documentary anthology “Hearths”.

In the warm half of the year, Anor lives with her husband and children near the church — on the shore of Lake Beloye, where the village of Krokhino once stood. The preserved foundations of village houses gave this land a second life — trees sprouted from the humus, returning soil to the Krokhino marshes after the flooding. Anor’s base stands on it: over the years of work, she has equipped several small cabins in the form of temporary housing for the family and volunteers, a bathhouse, and a kitchen.

The only way to get to Krokhino is by motorboat. At the height of the crisis, Anor, like all Belozersk residents, was forced to travel 120 kilometers to Cherepovets just to fill up the car and pour gasoline into canisters for the boat. Now it is 40 kilometers to the nearest Lukoil station near the village of Lipin Bor, where it is possible to pay with a fuel card. For an organization living on cashless donations, a fuel card is the only way to refuel. According to Anor, in July the Belozersk gas stations stopped accepting this payment method. “Now gasoline can only be bought for cash, at twice the price it was at the beginning of summer”, Tukaeva says.

In 2025, the Krokhino Foundation received a grant from the Potanin Foundation to reconstruct the former pumping station in Belozersk. By 2027, the building is planned to house a museum of memory about the flooded villages of Belozerye. Work under this grant is Anor’s only predictable goal for the coming year. “The Krokhino project exists thanks to private donations and donations from companies, and right now it is truly a very difficult stage for attracting attention and funds to projects like this at all. Even before, they didn’t seem very important or socially acute, and now, against the backdrop of other problems and hardships, they have become completely devalued. And as for planning for the future, how can you take into account, in your own work, for example, a fuel crisis? Transport service prices have gone up threefold, if not fourfold. If last year we could order a [cargo] truck for 20,000 rubles, this year it costs 100,000. That can’t be built into a grant whose budget was calculated two years ago”, Tukaeva says.

According to a report on the state accounting website, in 2025 the Krokhino Foundation’s budget amounted to 10.7 million rubles, half of which was grant money for building the museum of memory. At the same time, by the end of 2025 the foundation received almost three times less in private donations than the year before.

***

Neither the authorities themselves voice any confidence in tomorrow or reasonable gasoline prices. Olga (name changed), an employee of the Belozersk administration, agreed to speak about the fuel crisis in the city on condition of anonymity. Olga believes that prices have clearly affected the decline in tolerance toward regional authorities, but neither the district administration nor the governor can fix the situation — the issue must be resolved at the federal level. Nevertheless, Olga is sure that the situation in the city will only get worse and that a new wave of crisis is coming. The woman herself admits that despite the economic situation, she remains in Belozersk because she is afraid to go with her daughter to a big city, since military operations are taking place across the country. There is no information in open sources about drone attacks on the territory of Belozersk District.

Belozersk residents are voicing dissatisfaction with the situation in the city online. The VK public page “Belozerskiye Vesti” is full of complaints to the authorities about landscaping, utility tariffs, and, of course, gasoline prices:

“Almost 100 rubles per liter more expensive than in Cherepovets, I was driving home from the dacha yesterday, there were no price tags at all in Belozersk, I filled up 95 at Tatneft in the city for 69.56, they’ve completely f@cked up”

“When will there be gasoline in the city already, Belozersk District Administration ??? At a normal market, reasonable price? Why isn’t the administration making any effort to stabilize the fuel situation in the city?“

“and what will happen after the elections...?(”

People in Belozersk’s public chats keep quiet about the causes of the fuel crisis, but pro-government commentators write about the ongoing war in Ukraine as a reason to absolve the administration of responsibility:

“There are gasoline problems all over the country! Have you forgotten that there is a war going on? You should be ashamed to complain about temporary problems. So what if the guys are fighting there so that you can live peacefully and not panic. You can stir up the country and it’ll be like ’91 — no jobs, no salaries, banditry, lawlessness. No matter how you feel about the current власти, it doesn’t do you credit to write filth about the leaders. If you don’t respect them, at least respect yourself by not sinking to outright insults”.

One local resident replied to this as follows:

“We haven’t forgotten that there is a war going on. But the authorities keep playing games with us with holidays and festivals and, it feels like, know less than we do about the gasoline problem. So you’re barking up the wrong tree here. If you listen to you, then let some people run wild, others fight, and we’ll live peacefully and ignore the problems”.

When asked who residents will vote for in September in the State Duma elections, none of the Belozersk locals speaking with Most’s correspondent answered.

Photos by Anastasia Anisina