Ukraine will double down on attacking Russian oil refineries in response to a new policy of airstrikes by Moscow designed to force people to abandon Kyiv and other cities, but will not target civilians, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Ukrainian intelligence has obtained documents showing that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had issued a “new doctrine” of military attacks on a much broader range of civilian targets ahead of this winter, Zelenskiy said.
“We saw documents and we know that they allow them attack infrastructure … logistics … roads, schools, hospitals, to pressure people to leave the capital, leave different cities,” Zelenskiy said. “This is the goal of the operation.”
Driving the shift in policy, Zelenskiy said, was Putin’s desire to appear strong at a time when his military was losing ground in a key frontline region and sustaining higher levels of casualties.
The Kremlin was not available to comment on Saturday. But in a statement urging foreign nationals to leave Kyiv, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would continue to systematically hit targets in what it said were retaliatory strikes for Ukrainian attacks on Russia in recent months.
Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians.
