ALBAWABA - In a candid statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly admitted that the recent waves of strikes that Ukraine has conducted on Russia have been effective.
Ukraine has picked up the pace of the stagnating war by targeting and severely harming Russian fuel and energy infrastructure, in Moscow and Crimea especially. Last week, it launched one of the largest drone attacks since the start of the war - targeting 12 regions in Russia, as well as its own Crimean Peninsula.
The recent Ukrainian attacks have caused fuel shortages in Russia. In the occupied Crimean peninsula, fuel sales have been completely banned to non-military personnel in a state of emergency, with Ukraine's Defense Minister saying he wants to turn the peninsula into "an island," isolating it from the rest of Russia. While in the rest of the country, many regions are facing shortages as Moscow scrambles to get something as basic as fuel to citizens.
"As for strikes against critical infrastructure in general, and energy infrastructure in particular, of course these attacks on our infrastructure facilities create problems, that's obvious," Putin said in an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin. "Right now we're observing a certain shortage, but it's not critical."
According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian military achieved this by targeting Russian air-defense systems slowly over months then, when a sufficient number of them are destroyed, they overwhelm the rest of the defenses with a large scale drone attack that targets the infrastructure.
Aware of this, Putin stated that:
"The first task is to quickly and significantly ramp up production of those air defense systems that are most needed," Putin said during the interview Sunday.
It seems that the more time passes, the better Ukraine gets at facing Russia - with the latest deep attacks causing serious problems for Putin’s regime.
