Cyprus News Agency

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared information from a report prepared by Oleh Ivashchenko, head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence. Zelensky said that according to Russia’s internal documents, some export categories of the aggressor state had fallen by 80 percent in August alone.

Zelensky said this had caused significant losses to Russia’s federal budget as well as regional budgets that had already been on the verge of bankruptcy. He added that the Russian side had acknowledged that, due to Ukrainian drone strikes, vessels of the Black Sea Fleet were largely blocked in Novorossiysk and unable to operate at sea.

Zelensky said that because Russia is unable to escort commercial vessels and the shadow fleet entering the relevant ports, options under consideration include equipping civilian vessels with small arms, electronic warfare systems and military personnel. He said appropriate countermeasures would be prepared against Russia’s militarization of maritime transport.

The Ukrainian President said Defense Intelligence had confirmed the high effectiveness of deep strikes against Russia’s military production facilities and oil industry. Zelensky said that according to Russian data, Russia had lost a significant portion of its solid-fuel rocket engine production capacity following long-range strikes on the Kamensky Plant in the Rostov region.

Zelensky said they had also obtained updated data on Russia’s ballistic missile production and its plans to increase that production, adding that measures would be taken in response. He stressed that supplies to Russia of components, equipment and machine tools used in missile production must be completely blocked, saying Russia could not implement any element of its missile program without foreign components.

Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence was also said to have evidence that operations had stopped at one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in Kstovo, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, which processes 17 million tonnes of oil annually. Zelensky said operations had also stopped at other oil refineries and thanked Ukrainian soldiers for their precise operations.