Published on 6/25/2026
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he agreed to launch a 40-day campaign to pressure Russia to end the war on Kiev, after consulting with the head of the Ukrainian Security Service regarding strikes directed at Russian targets.
Zelensky wrote on the Telegram platform today, Thursday, “I agreed to a 40-day operation carried out by the security service to influence the aggressor country in order to pressure an end to the war.”
For months, Ukraine has launched waves of medium and long-term strikes on targets in Russia or in areas controlled by Russia, focusing mainly on the oil sector.
Ukrainian strikes on Crimea
Russian local authorities in Crimea announced that two people, including a child, were killed in Ukrainian attacks at night, and two others were injured.
The Ukrainian army seeks to cut off supply routes in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and uses to support its military operations against Ukrainian forces.
Another civilian was killed at night in an attack by Ukrainian forces on the Belgorod region, according to a statement issued by the local authorities.
Ukrainian drone strikes also killed two people in the Bryansk border region, a 23-year-old driver and a 15-year-old girl, according to regional authorities.
In the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, a fire broke out in the Poltavskaya oil depot in Krasnoarmeysky “following the fall of drone debris,” local official Alexander Kharitonov said on social media.
In total, 269 Ukrainian drones were shot down at night in Russian airspace and over the Crimean Peninsula.
Targeting oil facilities
Ukraine has begun targeting, on an almost weekly basis, oil refineries, transportation pipelines, and warehouses in Russia, in an effort to deprive Moscow of revenues from fuel sales that are used to finance its war effort in Ukraine since 2022.
These strikes often cause large fires, but their impact on Russian oil production remains difficult to assess.
On the Ukrainian side, the railway company announced on Thursday that one of its workers was killed in a strike that hit a train in the southern Zaporozhye region.
An attack stops a Russian refinery
In a related development, Reuters news agency quoted two knowledgeable sources in the oil sector, on Thursday, that the Norsi refinery, the fourth largest oil refinery in Russia and the second largest gasoline producer, suspended its operations yesterday, Wednesday, following a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukraine announced that its campaign of long-range air strikes on Russian energy facilities aims to weaken a major source of financing the war and incite the conflict to be felt by Russian citizens.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that such attacks on civilian infrastructure aim to sow discord among the population.
The two sources indicated that the attack caused damage to the main refining unit (CDU-5) at the Noursi refinery, which has a capacity of 12,000 tons per day, equivalent to about a quarter of the refinery’s total capacity.
The two sources added that the refinery may use other units to resume its operations in the near future.
