Our Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has obtained new Russian documents assessing the aggressor state’s losses from the war. Importantly, this is specifically a Russian internal assessment – one they are trying to conceal both from the world and from their own domestic audience.
The first major indicator is a reduction in active oil wells. Just a single Russian oil company – and not even the largest one – has already been forced to shut down around 400 wells. Given the specifics of Russian oil production, these are significant losses, as restarting wells in Russia is far more difficult than in other oil-producing countries.
The second indicator is a reduction in oil refining of at least 10% in just a few months this year alone. We see that our Ukrainian long-range sanctions are truly effective, and we will continue to scale up this line of our active actions. The data on the banking crisis in Russia is also quite convincing: 11 financial institutions are preparing for full liquidation due to problems that cannot be resolved by other means, while another eight banks have accumulated critical issues that cannot be addressed without external resources. This year’s federal budget deficit figures also look encouraging for us, standing at almost $80 billion by the fifth month of this year, alongside the bankruptcy of a significant number of Russian regional budgets.
I have also instructed the Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, Oleh Luhovskyi, to share, in a format that does not compromise our sources, the obtained information on Russia’s attempts to involve global companies in resolving its financial hardship and in sanction-evasion schemes. In particular, we have recorded attempts to organize the export of grain from the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea – and, regrettably, other forms of economic exploitation of the peninsula involving entities from the United States. We will inform our partners. We are also recording attempts to bring investment and technology from democratic countries into Russia’s Arctic oil and gas projects. We know how to counter this. Thank you to everyone who helps us. Thank you to all our Ukrainian intelligence officers.