Zelensky declares 40-day blitz on Russia as Moscow finds itself on the back foot amid worsening fuel crisis

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared a 40-day campaign of targeted airstrikes “against the aggressor state aimed at compelling it to end the war” on Thursday as the Kremlin found itself on the back foot as fuel shortages worsened across Russia. 

Sharing a photograph of himself receiving a briefing from Major General Yevhenii Khmara, the acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), Zelensky said that he had approved a 40-day “influence operation” against Russia, noting that “for several months in a row, the SSU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones.”

On Friday morning, Russia’s Defence Ministry said that its air defence systems had intercepted 660 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russian news agency TASS reported, making it the largest single Ukrainian attack on Russia so far this year. 

Compounding the damage done by other recent Ukrainian drone strikes on strategically important Russian energy infrastructure, including one of the country's biggest oil refineries in Moscow, Zelensky announced on Thursday that an oil depot in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, as well as two oil refineries in central Russia, both over 1,500 kilometres from the front line, had also been hit. 

The impact of Ukraine’s unrelenting focus on striking Russia’s vital energy infrastructure, particularly its oil refineries and depots, is now being felt nationwide, with long lines of cars forming at petrol stations throughout Russia, sky-high prices at the pumps in some regions, and a blanket ban on the sale of petrol in place in Russian-annexed Crimea since Sunday.