Putin admits Russia was unprepared for Ukraine’s refinery strike campaign

Vladimir Putin acknowledged at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok that Russia had not prepared for the scale of Ukrainian strikes on its oil refineries, saying Moscow wrongly assumed the facilities would be treated as civilian and spared even in wartime. He said the attacks, which Bloomberg reports hit a record 21 refineries in August alone, have contributed to what the Moscow Times called Russia's worst fuel crisis in its modern history.

Putin said Russia has been forced to respond in kind and described its retaliation as significant, while claiming the remaining tenth of damaged refinery capacity would soon be restored. Russia has meanwhile begun importing gasoline from India, Kazakhstan and Morocco, and Putin's own approval rating has dropped a record five points to 66 percent, its lowest in nearly four years.

The same day, Russian strikes hit Kyiv Oblast, a Nova Post depot in Dnipro, and the Kharkiv Oblast settlement of Pechenihy, killing one person and wounding at least fifteen others across the attacks.

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