Zelenskyy's Big Claim: Putin Fears for His Life, No Major Russian Oil Refinery Left Unstruck

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that intensifying Ukrainian strikes on Moscow could eventually push Vladimir Putin to fear for his safety and relocate.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made two striking claims this week, telling the Financial Times that deep strikes on Russian territory are pushing Vladimir Putin toward genuine fear for his safety, while separately telling NATO leaders that Ukraine has now struck every major oil refinery in Russia.

In comments to the Financial Times, Zelensky argued that Putin’s detachment from the war changed once Ukrainian strikes started reaching deep into Russian territory. He explained that when Ukraine’s long-range strikes weren’t landing in Moscow or St. Petersburg, Putin treated the war as something happening far away from him, something that didn’t require much of his attention.

That, according to Zelensky, is starting to shift. He told the Financial Times that once Putin begins to feel the war’s impact inside Moscow itself, he’ll start to understand what people in Russia’s Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk regions have already been living through.

Zelensky went further, predicting that a dramatic escalation in strike numbers could eventually force Putin to relocate. “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,” Zelensky said. He framed that moment as a turning point. “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 was direct about what he believes is driving this dynamic. “He fears for his life,” Zelensky said.

“That is why deep strikes have had, and continue to have, a major impact. We must keep working on this. It is constant, difficult, and daily work,” Zelensky said. He credited Ukrainian troops on the front lines as the ones carrying the heaviest burden, while saying the rest of the country has a responsibility to keep supplying them. He described that combined effort as the path toward what he called a just and strong peace for Ukraine.

Zelensky said Russia had long operated under the assumption that its deep rear was untouchable, a territorial advantage no other country had. That assumption, he said, no longer holds. He pointed to a specific example from the day before the summit, when Ukrainian drones broke through Russian defenses and struck an oil refinery in Siberia.

“This is not an exception. It is the new reality. There is no major oil refinery left in Russia that has not been struck by Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

He was careful to frame the number without triumphalism. “Frankly, we take no pride in this. We are saying it to show what modern war looks like, a war we did not start, but one we are forced to fight, in order to defend our country,” Zelensky said.