Occupied Crimea is now rationing petrol at 20 litres per vehicle a week, down from 20 litres a day, and the QR codes needed to buy it sold out within two hours on 7 June1. ISW reports shortages of buckwheat, sugar, rice and flour spreading across the peninsula alongside the rationing. For ordinary drivers that means queuing for a code that buys barely a week's commuting.
On 7 June, Ukraine's Code 9.2 drone unit struck the Chonhar Bridge, one of the road links from mainland Russia into Crimea, forcing traffic to reroute via Armyansk and adding roughly 130km to supply runs2. A day earlier, ISW assessed Ukraine had achieved drone fire control over the T-22-09 land corridor, the route Russia opened in 2022 to bypass the Kerch bridge.
Russia can still resupply Crimea, yet the Kerch bridge, the T-22-09 corridor and now the Chonhar Bridge are each contested or lengthened. The squeeze is the same logic as Ukraine's strike on the Baltic Fleet and its run of net territorial gains since the spring: interdict the rear rather than batter a static front, and let the cost surface as queues and rationing far from the line of contact.
