Verifying footage of queues for fuel in Russia and occupied Ukrainepublished at 12:03 BST
Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist
Charles from Leeds has asked if we can delve further into fuel queues at least in part caused by Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure. We’re always keen to hear what you would like us to verify – so I have been taking a look at just that.
One video from Telegram shows cars and lorries in standstill lines at a Russian fuel station. In the footage, the man filming complains that “there’s no petrol anywhere” but at the petrol stations operated by Russia’s oil giant Rosneft.
Image source, TelegramWe’ve confirmed it was filmed at a garage in the town of Svetlograd in the Stavropol region of southern Russia.
The video’s description suggested it was filmed there and the name and logo of energy firm Rosneft is clearly visible. So I searched for Rosneft garages in the area on Yandex, the Russian-language equivalent of Google, until I found street-level imagery in Svetlograd that matched.
I ran several individual frames of the video through search engines which suggested it was first shared online on 10 October.
There have also been fuel shortages in occupied Crimea, which has been illegally annexed by Russia since 2014.
In a second video, which appears to have been first posted online on 28 September, there is a long queue of vehicles waiting to access a TES fuel station in Yalta on Crimea’s south coast.
To verify this, I matched the ridge of the hill beyond the petrol station as well as the curve of the road to satellite imagery.
You can read more about how Ukraine’s attacks on oil refineries have affected petrol and diesel supplies in parts of Russia and occupied Ukraine in our online story here.
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