Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
At the annual Valdai gathering, where the Kremlin stages its most carefully framed set pieces, numbers that make Russia look vulnerable are rarely volunteered from the stage.
Speaking on October 1 at the plenary session of the 23rd Valdai Discussion Club meeting outside Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that Ukraine’s long-range campaign against Russian oil refineries had cost the country roughly 1% of gross domestic product.
The figure is one of the most explicit public quantifications Putin has offered of concrete damage from Kyiv’s drone and missile strikes on Russia’s energy backbone.
“They started striking refineries and announced the goal straightforward – to inflict damage to our economy. The goal was partly achieved because according to our estimates, we lost about 1% of the GDP,” Putin said, in remarks carried by Russian state agency TASS.
He called the swap “ridiculous”
Even after making the admission, Putin dismissed a proposal in which Russia would halt attacks on Ukrainian ships in exchange for Kyiv ending its refinery strikes.
“We are told: ‘Let them stop striking your refineries, and you will stop striking their ships.’ It is simply ridiculous,” Putin said, arguing that Russian diesel could not reach foreign buyers in any case because of sanctions, while Moscow would have to give up striking economically important targets inside Ukraine in return.
Putin said Russia had expanded its own long-range campaign to Ukrainian steel plants and rail supply chains.
What Zelensky actually offered
The proposal Putin batted away grew out of a September 22 meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
After the meeting, Zelensky told reporters Kyiv was open to a reciprocal pause that would cover both sides’ energy infrastructure. “We don’t want to go into details, we are ready for energy ceasefire,” he said, specifying that Ukraine would only halt its refinery campaign if Moscow stopped targeting the Ukrainian power grid.
A campaign that keeps biting
Putin’s number lands against mounting evidence that Ukraine’s strike doctrine is working.
The Insider counted 27 Russian energy facilities hit in a July-to-October 2025 wave, with gaps between repeat strikes shrinking from months to weeks.
Independent assessments cited in that reporting put roughly 38% of Russia’s primary refining capacity offline in late September 2025, while JPMorgan Chase estimated the lost refining output at around 500,000 barrels, a drop of roughly 10%.
Moscow banned gasoline exports through the end of 2025 while keeping diesel exports partially open, and fuel supply disruptions spread across nearly 60 Russian regions, with annexed Crimea hit hardest and authorities there imposing a 20-liter-per-person cap at the pump, according to the same tracking.
Putin, for his part, said Russia still has enough diesel for its domestic needs.
