The governor of Russia's Astrakhan region told residents not to panic on Wednesday after its main city, close to a huge gas chemical complex that was attacked by Ukrainian drones this week, was enveloped in a cloud of natural gas.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union greatly affected this decades-old gas business. Russian gas now had to transit an independent Ukraine. Even so, Russia continued to increase its exports to Europe, with the exported volume rising from 110 billion cubic meters in 1990 to 175 billion in 2020.