Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has ordered his military to increase its long-range drone strikes against Russia to 1,000 per day, up from about 300 currently. “There needs to be more: there is a concrete goal, and we will fulfil this task,” the Ukrainian president declared on Friday in his evening address.
Russia’s gasoline production fell to about 70% of domestic consumption levels by the end of August after a series of drone attacks forced major refineries to suspend operations, according to two industry sources who spoke to Reuters. After a brief respite at the end of July, when some local authorities began easing or lifting restrictions on fuel sales, shortages returned to Russian regions in August. Over the past week, drones struck and halted operations at several major refineries, including plants in Perm, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl, all significant producers of motor gasoline.
Russia is losing about 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit, western officials have said. While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the past two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured, Peter Walker writes.
