Russia cutting active oil wells as war losses mount – Zelensky

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

“The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has obtained new Russian documents assessing the aggressor state’s losses from the war. Importantly, this is specifically a Russian internal assessment – one they are trying to conceal both from the world and from their own domestic audience. The first major indicator is a reduction in active oil wells. Just a single Russian oil company – and not even the largest one – has already been forced to shut down around 400 wells,” the Ukrainian President said.

He stressed that, given the specifics of Russian oil extraction, these are substantial losses because restarting wells in Russia is far more difficult than in other oil-producing countries.

According to Zelenskyy, the second indicator is a reduction in oil refining by at least 10% within just several months this year.

“We see that our Ukrainian long-range sanctions are truly effective, and we will continue to scale up this line of our active actions,” he emphasized.

The President added that data regarding Russia’s banking crisis also appear convincing. According to him, 11 financial institutions in Russia are preparing for complete liquidation due to problems that cannot be resolved otherwise, while another eight banks have accumulated critical issues that cannot be addressed without external resources.

“This year’s federal budget deficit figures also look encouraging for us, standing at almost $80 billion by the fifth month of this year, alongside the bankruptcy of a significant number of Russian regional budgets,” he noted.

The President instructed the Head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Oleh Luhovskyi, to disseminate the obtained information on Russia’s attempts to involve global companies in resolving its financial hardship and in sanction-evasion schemes in a format that does not compromise our sources.

“In particular, we have recorded attempts to organize the export of grain from the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea – and, regrettably, other forms of economic exploitation of the peninsula involving entities from the United States. We will inform our partners. We are also recording attempts to bring investment and technology from democratic countries into Russia’s Arctic oil and gas projects. We know how to counter this,” Zelensky said.

As reported by Ukrinform, Russia’s corporate bond market is rapidly approaching a large-scale wave of defaults amid worsening economic conditions caused by the war against Ukraine and the prolonged crisis in the Russian economy.

Photo: Zelensky / Telegram