Zelensky says Ukraine will hit Russian refineries after a wider strike doctrine

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine would step up strikes on Russian oil refineries after what he described as a new Russian doctrine of hitting roads, schools and hospitals in order to push people out of Kyiv and other cities.

In a Reuters interview he said Ukrainian intelligence had obtained documents showing that Vladimir Putin had authorised a wider set of 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."

He set the Ukrainian reply in one place. "We have to respond in any way we can. 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." He said Ukraine would not target civilian infrastructure at random. The distinction he drew is between refineries, which he treats as the cash register of the war, and the cities he accused Russia of trying to empty.

The interview was given as Russia was already striking the capital during visits by foreign leaders. Chancellor Friedrich Merz was in Kyiv on Sunday, a day after the Kremlin had warned that foreign diplomats there were in mortal danger. Air-raid sirens sounded through his programme. Germany announced about €1 billion in military aid and €350 million for energy repairs, and company executives travelling with Merz signed a set of defence and energy agreements that German officials put at about €6.6 billion. Zelensky's refinery line is the Ukrainian half of that weekend: incoming strikes on cities and power, an outgoing promise to hit the plants that fund them.

He tied the Russian shift to the front. In his account, Putin wanted to look strong at a moment when Russian units were losing ground in a key sector and taking higher casualties. Reuters reported that reading as Zelensky's, not as an independent casualty audit. The documents he cited have not been published. Until they are, the doctrine claim rests on his description of papers his services say they hold.

The refinery campaign is not new in kind. Ukraine has struck Russian oil infrastructure through the year, using drones at ranges that reach plants well behind the border. What Zelensky added was a rule: energy for energy, and refineries first, because they pay for the war. That rule also limits him. If his own sentence is the policy, a strike on a Russian apartment block would break it, and a strike on a pumping station or a fuel train would sit inside it. Refineries are the cleanest target on that list. They are also among the hardest, because the air defence around them has thickened each time a plant has been hit.

Winter is the clock on both sides of the exchange. Russian strikes on Ukrainian generation and district heating are aimed at the months when a city without power loses people. Ukrainian strikes on refineries are aimed at the months when the Russian budget feels a lost export cargo. Merz's €350 million for repairs is a direct answer to the first. Zelensky's refinery line is his answer to the second. Neither replaces the other. A repaired substation in Kyiv does not stop a drone. A burning crude unit in Russia does not heat an apartment.

The claim that can be tested without the documents is the one about cities. If the pattern of Russian strikes through October clusters on power, rail and municipal buildings in Kyiv and the larger towns, Zelensky's description of the goal matches the target set, whether or not a written doctrine exists. If the pattern stays on the front and on known military sites, the documents he described are doing more work than the bomb damage. He has said he saw them. He has not shown them.