Myanmar's reliance on imported fuel squeezes military as civilians suffer

BANGKOK -- Myanmar's army is learning a bitter lesson in military logistics in its faltering campaign against determined insurgents on multiple fronts. Forces under Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the military leader whose coup in 2021 rekindled civil war, are having to scrounge for increasingly costly supplies of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel to feed their military machine.

Fuel is needed not just for Russian jet bombers and helicopter gunships, but also for trucks and armored personnel carriers, and for the generators used in command bunkers, communications centers, military hospitals and officer housing.