Zelenskyy instructs intelligence to publicize Russia's attempts to involve global companies in fixing crisis financial situation
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy voiced his own assessments of the Russian side’s situation regarding the war in Ukraine based on Ukrainian intelligence data—a reduction in active oil wells and oil refining by at least 10%, data on a crisis in the banking sector, and a significant deficit in the Russia federal budget; Zelenskyy instructed to publicize Russia’s attempts to involve global companies in fixing the crisis financial situation and bypassing sanctions.
"Our Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has obtained new Russian documents assessing the losses of Russia from the war. It is important that this is precisely a Russian internal assessment, which they are trying to hide from the world and from the internal Russian audience," he wrote on his Telegram channel on Monday.
Zelenskyy noted that the first significant indicator is the reduction of active oil wells. According to him, just one Russian oil company—and not the largest—has already been forced to close about 400 wells. "Given the specifics of Russian oil production, these are tangible losses, since restarting wells in Russia is much more difficult than in other oil-producing countries," the President of Ukraine said.
"The second indicator is a reduction in oil refining by at least 10% in just a few months of this year already. We see that our Ukrainian long-range sanctions are indeed working, and we will increase this direction of our active operations," Zelenskyy said.
He also noted that the data on the banking crisis in Russia looks quite convincing—11 financial institutions are preparing for complete liquidation "due to problems that cannot be solved in any other way, and another 8 banking institutions have accumulated critical problems that cannot be covered without involving third-party resources."
Zelenskyy called the indicators of the federal budget deficit this year optimistic for Ukraine, "namely almost $80 billion in the fifth month of the year, and this is against the backdrop of the bankruptcy of a significant part of Russian regional budgets."
The President reported that he instructed the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, Oleh Luhovsky, to disseminate the obtained information about Russia’s attempts to involve global companies in correcting the crisis financial situation and sanctions evasion schemes in a format that will not harm sources.
"In particular, we have recorded, unfortunately, attempts to organize the export of grain from the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, as well as other economic exploitation of the peninsula with the participation of entities from the United States. We will inform our partners. We also record attempts to bring investments and technologies from countries of the democratic world into Russian oil and gas Arctic projects. We know how to counteract this," he said.
"Thank you to everyone who helps! Thank you to all our Ukrainian intelligence officers!" the Head of the Ukrainian State added.