Zelenskiy Vows Deeper Strikes on Russian Refineries as Moscow Targets Cities to Drive Out Residents

Imagine your government telling you, in effect, that the safest choice is to leave your own city. That is the grim calculus Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Moscow is now imposing on residents of Kyiv and other urban centers, through a deliberate campaign of strikes meant to make daily life unlivable.

Zelenskiy told Reuters that Ukrainian intelligence has obtained documents showing Russian leader Vladimir Putin has signed off on what he called a "new doctrine" authorizing a much wider range of civilian targets ahead of winter. "We saw documents and we know that they allow them to attack infrastructure, logistics, and especially to attack in the cities, in the villages, everywhere, roads, schools, hospitals," he said. "To pressure people to leave the capital, leave different cities: this is the goal of the operation."

Think of it as a siege without walls. Rather than surrounding a city with troops, the strategy aims to make residents flee through sheer exhaustion: no power, no water, no working bridges, no sense of safety. Zelenskiy said the shift is tied to Putin's desire to project strength at a moment when Russian forces are losing ground in a critical frontline region and absorbing heavier casualties.

The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment over the weekend. But Russia's Foreign Ministry, in a statement urging foreign nationals to leave Kyiv, said Moscow would keep hitting targets as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory in recent months. Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians, even as the human toll mounts on both sides of the border.

Refineries as Retaliation

Zelenskiy's answer to this pressure campaign is not symmetrical escalation. It is targeted economic pain. Ukraine will intensify its attacks on Russian oil refineries, he said, treating them as the financial engine of Moscow's war effort rather than as a tit-for-tat response to civilian suffering.

"We have to respond in any way (we can)," Zelenskiy said in English. "With their attacks on our energy, we have to respond on their energy. First of all, oil refiners etc: what gives money to them for this war. But we will not respond, of course, just like them, on any civilian objects."

That distinction matters, and it is likely to matter to Washington too. President Donald Trump last month urged Kyiv to pull back from hitting Russian oil installations, arguing the strikes were pushing global diesel prices higher. Zelenskiy, speaking as air raid sirens sounded outside the presidential offices, said he has seen no sign that Putin is interested in peace talks or in a ceasefire covering energy infrastructure specifically.

The past week has offered little reassurance on that front. Russian drones and missiles have repeatedly struck Kyiv's energy and telecoms networks along with road and rail links. For the first time in the war, Russia targeted bridges across the Dnipro river that connect the capital's east and west banks, a strike with obvious implications for how a city under bombardment can still move people, supplies, and emergency services across itself.

Amid the grim news, Zelenskiy pointed to a bright spot on the battlefield. A Ukrainian counteroffensive codenamed "Vivaldi" has reclaimed roughly 140 square kilometers, about 54 square miles, in the eastern Donbas region, and the operation is ongoing. Russia has insisted that full control of Donbas is a non-negotiable condition for any peace settlement, which makes Ukraine's gains there politically significant well beyond their size on a map.

Diplomatically, the picture remains murky. Washington has proposed a resumption of trilateral talks in the United Arab Emirates in the coming weeks, but Zelenskiy noted no date or location has been fixed. He said he would welcome a meeting with Putin at a planned G20 summit in Miami in December, yet he warned against what he called "illusions" that Russia would simply stop fighting once it controlled Donbas. "It's not fair just to normalise," he said, arguing that any restoration of Western economic and diplomatic ties with Moscow must be contingent on an actual end to hostilities. "Peace is more important than any kind of economy."

On the ground, Ukraine's air defenders are fighting a technology race against a cheaper, faster threat. Since summer, Russia has ramped up launches of jet-powered Shahed drones, dozens a day, that fly too fast for Ukraine's existing interceptor drones to reliably catch. Zelenskiy said fighter jets, F-16s and MiGs, have had to shoulder the burden, downing around 60% of these drones, but ammunition for the planes' 20mm guns is running low.

Kyiv is pursuing several fixes at once: boosting electronic jamming, developing five new interceptor drone models (two of which have shown a modest 30% success rate in testing, with plans to scale up), and preparing to receive a first shipment of small, inexpensive air defense missiles in mid-October designed specifically to counter the new Shaheds.

Ukraine also marked a milestone this week with the first combat use of its domestically produced FP-7 ballistic missile, which has a range of about 250 kilometers. Zelenskiy said he has personally pressed the manufacturer, Fire Point, to accelerate a longer-range successor, the FP-9, which the company says could reach Moscow. "I said to them, where is my FP-9?" Zelenskiy said. "The FP-9 will be ready this autumn, I'm sure."

Why It Matters

This is, at its core, a story about what war does to ordinary civilian systems: power grids, bridges, hospitals, heating. Last winter, the worst of the conflict so far, Russian strikes left large parts of Ukraine without electricity and heat for days. Officials now warn Moscow has stockpiled hundreds of ballistic missiles for another assault on that same infrastructure this winter.

Zelenskiy also tied recent drone incursions and hybrid attacks across Europe to an effort to intimidate European publics and erode support for Ukraine, something Russia denies. Meanwhile, after talks in Brussels, Ukraine says it has unlocked funding to keep buying drones into 2027, closing a $27 billion gap in its defense budget through a mix of domestic resources, bilateral aid, and credits drawn from next year's share of a €90 billion EU loan. For a country trying to survive both a military winter and a diplomatic standoff, that funding fix counts as rare good news.