Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Vladimir Putin that the mass drone strikes targeting Russia are only going to get worse.
In a post on social media, Zelensky said Ukraine would continue to pummel Moscow and St. Petersburg with large-scale drone attacks until the Russian president begins to “grasp the reality of the situation.”
Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russia with one-way attack drones as the war enters its fifth year, including strikes on the country’s oil refineries, which play a key role in funding the invasion and keeping Putin’s regime afloat.
Russian officials reported that they had downed more than 450 Ukrainian drones overnight across the country, including over Moscow and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014.
“When our deep strikes were not reaching Moscow and St. Petersburg, Putin did not think much about it. He understood that the war was far from the Kremlin,” Zelensky wrote.
“When not one hundred drones but a thousand start reaching Moscow, and when he feels it and sees it, he will be advised to move somewhere beyond the Urals. That will be a moment that opens a new chapter on the path toward ending the war. The farther Putin is from Moscow, the closer the end of the war and peace will be.”
Zelensky said Ukraine’s strategy of targeting Russia with drone attacks means that Putin “fears for his life.”
He added that hitting Moscow and St. Petersburg is also crucial because that’s where the country’s “elites” live and where Russian authorities “make the decisions to kill us.”
“That is why deep strikes have had, and continue to have, a major impact. We must keep working on this,” Zelensky said.
“It is constant, difficult, and daily work. We must all stay focused and energized. The heroes are those on the front line. And all of us, the entire state, must keep carrying shells to them. If we do, we will bring a just and strong peace for Ukraine. That is what victory means for us.”
Zelensky’s remarks, which he shared online, were taken from an interview with the Financial Times.
Elsewhere, Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, reported that the latest round of drone attacks caused chaos at the country’s airports.
Temporary flight restrictions were put in place at several airports, including Sochi, Saratov, and Cheboksary, as well as Russia’s four biggest international airports: Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Zhukovsky.
