by Scott Ritter, Real Scott Ritter:
Zelensky and his Western overlords thought they could compel Russia to enter into peace negotiations. All they did is seal Ukraine’s tragic fate.
On June 25 Ukraine’s President. Volodymyr Zelensky, ordered the initiation of a 40-day offensive intended to “influence” Russia to end the war. In a message delivered via social media, Zelensky announced that “I approved a 40-day influence operation for the service against the aggressor state aimed at compelling it to end the war.”
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On August 3, on the eve of the expiration of the 40-day campaign, Zelensky acknowledged that the 40-day campaign had not achieved its objective of driving Russia to embrace peace. Instead, Zelensky accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of preparing to prolong the conflict through further mobilization and new attacks. Rather than acknowledging failure, however, Zelensky declared that Ukraine would double down on renewed diplomatic efforts, increased economic restrictions, and continued military actions to create conditions where Russia would have no alternative but to agree to negotiations on terms acceptable by Ukraine.
The 40-day gap between the commencement of Zelensky’s “influence operation”, and the admission by the Ukrainian President that Russia was far from acknowledging defeat, has created a widening chasm between fact and fantasy, between reality and fiction, that appears to be recognized by virtually everyone but the Ukrainian President.
The 40-day surge in drone attacks came on the heels of a campaign that had been underway since May which saw increased attacks against Russia’s two largest cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and implied threats against other strategically important locations such as the Presidential residence in Valdai (which had come under Ukrainian drone attack in December 2025) and the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea with southern Russia.
The goal of these attacks was to force Russia to redeploy air defense forces to protect these strategically important targets, thereby stripping away air defense units from other regions. The 40-day drone campaign announced by Zelensky would seek to exploit these gaps in air defense coverage to bring the “pain” of war home to the people of Russia.
None of the pressure points Zelensky hoped to engage by his 40-day drone campaign produced anything remotely resembling the desired results. Indeed, in every instance, the opposite outcome was achieved. Zelensky hoped to trigger an energy crisis by attacking Russian petroleum refineries. While a compliant pro-Ukrainian western media declared that Russia had lost up to 40% of its refining capacity, the reality was far different: far from breaking the spirit of the Russian population by denying them access to gasoline and making them wait in long lines to get gas at high prices, the fact is that gasoline in August 2026 is cheaper than it was this time last year (AI-95, the most popular grade of gasoline, was 63.06 rubles per liter in August 2025, as opposed to 61.71 rubles per liter today), and there are virtually no lines of vehicles waiting to refuel.
Moreover, the timing couldn’t have been worse for Ukraine when it came to reducing Russian refining capacity—Russia simply diverted the stocks of crude destined for domestic refining into the export pipeline at a time when global demand rapidly absorbed these increased exports at record high prices. Zelensky’s war on the Russian energy sector was a major contributor to Russia’s oil and gas revenue, which accounts for around a fifth of total budget income, rising by more than 60% in July 2026 from the same month a year ago.
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