Alarming reports that Putin aims to escalate war, despite CIA warning (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,645)

The Kremlin is preparing for a serious escalation of the war. This could involve nuclear brinkmanship with tactical weapons as well as an attack on Nato Member States. The CIA director came to Moscow with a warning, but will Putin make the same mistake? An entire day at a fucking petrol station! Russia has been hit by another wave of the petrol crisis. Putin’s regime is responding with a decree on the nationalisation of companies unable to defend themselves against drones. What can Ukrainians achieve through massive attacks on Russia’s energy sector? Map of the day: where refineries have been hit. Video of the day: an attack using an Su-27 fighter jet. If three Kremlin-linked sources cited by the global news agency Bloomberg are correct, we — and Ukraine in particular — should prepare for a new escalation of the war by Moscow. Russian president Vladimir Putin is reportedly preparing to intensify ballistic attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. According to unnamed sources, even the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine cannot be ruled out. Such a possibility is reportedly being discussed increasingly often within the hawkish camp. It is important to add, however, that nothing currently points to this scenario. Alexander Gabuev, a respected Russian expert at the Carnegie Centre, also believes that as long as Putin can escalate using conventional weapons, including by increasing the number of missile strikes, he has little incentive to cross the nuclear threshold. Tactical nuclear weapons, Bloomberg wrote, are fitted with lower-yield warheads and have a shorter range than strategic missiles. Their aim is not to destroy an entire city, but they still have enormous destructive power and pose a risk of nuclear contamination across a wide area. Several analysts, including military expert Gustav Gressel, consider this option highly unlikely — unlike mobilisation, which he believes will certainly take place in some form. “I estimate that it will be a partial version, but they are considering all options, and a full mobilisation is one of them. But if you declare it, you need a reason to do so,” Gressel told Denník N. According to him, radical factions within the security services, the military and the intelligence services see such a reason. “They argue that the West is too cowardly to do anything anyway, and that they can tell the public that we are at war, one being waged against Russia by the West. I am sceptical that it will happen, but never underestimate the Russians’ capacity to do something stupid,” the Austrian expert added. Sanctions and massive Ukrainian attacks on large storage facilities and refineries, which have triggered a new wave of fuel shortages across Russia, as we write below, have so far not motivated the Kremlin to enter peace talks. Those talks have collapsed entirely. According to Bloomberg, the Kremlin sees Ukrainian strikes as attacks by Nato member states, “because alliance members provide Kyiv with weapons and intelligence”. Ratcliffe came to Moscow with a warning, but will Putin make the same mistake? The global news agency’s findings are all the more serious because they emerged at a time when there is renewed speculation about a Russian escalation against Nato countries. This was reportedly, according to the US daily The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the main subject of the US CIA director’s surprise visit to Moscow. Citing people familiar with the circumstances, it said that John Ratcliffe flew there aboard a Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft to warn Russia against attacking Nato countries. US intelligence services had previously said that Putin might seek to test the unity of the North Atlantic Alliance through “a limited attack on one of the allied countries”. According to the WSJ, US officials fear that Putin, due to the unfavourable situation on the Ukrainian front and domestic pressure, could launch an attack ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale ground invasion, probably against one of the Baltic countries. According to the newspaper, he may also be motivated by a shortage of US ammunition for Trump’s war with Iran. This version of the CIA director’s unexpected trip was also supported by the influential Brussels-based website Politico. It wrote that the risk of a potential Russian attack particularly concerns the three Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It also recalled that, at the end of 2021, the then intelligence chief Bill Burns warned Putin against invading Ukraine — something Moscow repeatedly denied — only to launch a full-scale war three months later, disguised as a “special military operation”, and so far failing to achieve a single one of its objectives. Thirdly, RFE/RL obtained a letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, in which commissioners from the Baltic countries, Finland and Poland, along with the EU’s foreign policy chief, reported growing concerns in the Baltics over Russian aggression and a “deteriorating security environment”, against the backdrop of an “increased number of airspace violations and drone incursions”. Russians are once again complaining that they cannot fill up anywhere. At the end of the summer, Russia was hit by a second wave of the petrol crisis caused by Ukrainian attacks on refineries and energy infrastructure. What life looks like with empty petrol stations, with queues stretching for kms even far behind the Ukrainian front, was described to Current Time by Ajaan from Yakutsk (his name was changed for security reasons). “Today I spent 11 hours at the Sakhaneftegazsbyt petrol station at the intersection with Maganskaya. The whole fucking day! They told us the problem had been resolved, but no — everything started going round in circles again. It is not only in Sakha; it is like this everywhere,” Ajaan, a resident of Yakutsk, complained to the Russian website. He is not the only one angered by the reintroduced limit of up to 20 litres. “Am I supposed to wait a day to fill a third of my tank? Seriously, what happened? What happened — is somebody bombing our refineries?”, said another. The country once compared by US senator John McCain to a petrol station has for several months been struggling with fuel shortages. Rather than exporting, it has become dependent on imports, while lowering standards even for petrol that damages the engines of new cars. 95-octane petrol was unavailable at nearly 80 percent of petrol stations in Russia. Demand for petrol delivery services has also grown among drivers whose cars have been left stranded; according to Verstka, such services cost between 800 and 15,000 roubles — roughly €8 to €150. Restrictions on petrol sales affect at least 10 regions, including Moscow, while prices have doubled in many places. According to Sergei Orlov, an expert at Irkutsk University, the renewed crisis has two interconnected causes: refineries are producing less fuel, while rail logistics cannot compensate for the changed geography of supplies. Residents of Siberia and the Far East are feeling the consequences most acutely. These are the consequences of frequent and precise Ukrainian strikes on the most vulnerable parts of refineries across the vast territory of the Russian Federation. Map of the day French blogger Clément Molin mapped the Ukrainian attacks in this way. He counted that they had hit 17 of Russia’s 20 largest refineries during the first eight months of this year. However, attacks on tankers, storage facilities and other installations must also be included, bringing the total to almost 130 attacks on targets connected with oil and fuel production. In 2026, at least 28 Russian 🇷🇺 refineries⛽️(out of approximately 48) were hit in 81 separate strikes.Seventeen of the twenty largest Russian refineries were struck during the first eight months of the year, sometimes sustaining significant damage, such as at Orsk, Perm, or… pic.twitter.com/eNkumUlIVn— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) August 26, 2026 For example, the refinery in Orsk, with an annual capacity of six million tonnes of oil, completely halted operations after the attack on 11 August, and repairs are expected to take half a year. A similar situation applies to the largest refinery in Omsk, with a capacity of up to 22 million tonnes per year. Following this week’s attack on the fourth-largest refinery, Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez (NORSI), the second-largest fuel producer in Nizhny Novgorod, production there was completely halted, according to Reuters, and it remains unclear when it will resume. All of Lukoil’s main Russian refineries have thus halted operations. The Perm refinery did so after a new Ukrainian attack on 21 August, while the Volgograd refinery suspended processing on 31 July. Overall, according to Rosstat statistics, production of petroleum products and coke fell in Russia by 19.3 percent in July compared with the previous year. This is only a partial estimate, as the state agency does not publish absolute volumes of petroleum products under a government order. How to solve it? Through nationalisation. Putin described the situation as “a certain inconvenience” that the government must keep under control. The Kremlin is trying to resolve the situation by banning exports of both petrol and diesel, and above all by importing fuel from Belarus — and, to a lesser extent, from India and Kazakhstan, as well as from Turkey for the first time in history. However, this is still insufficient, given daily consumption of 110,000 tonnes, while daily production was only 90,000 tonnes, according to Reuters. At the same time, Putin’s regime is redirecting petrol from Siberia and the Urals to the capital in an effort to make the crisis as inconspicuous there as possible. However, as Meduza wrote in its analysis, the second wave is far more pronounced in Moscow and the Moscow region. The share of petrol stations where drivers could fill up without queuing fell from 76 percent to 30 percent. In this context, Russian media have noted a new Putin decree allowing for the temporary nationalisation of critical-infrastructure facilities that are unable to defend themselves against drones. According to Meduza, the authorities could therefore seize all or part of a company’s property and assets. “They assume the powers of an owner, but will not be able to sell the property entrusted to them,” the Russian website wrote. For private owners, as The Bell underlined, it is difficult to protect their businesses independently against Ukrainian drone attacks. It said that only the Russian National Guard, the interior ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Protective Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the emergencies ministry, departmental security services and private security companies may take action against drones in any way — by jamming their signals, damaging or destroying them. According to The Bell, companies must hire licensed security personnel and obtain permission to deploy drone jammers. What Ukraine is aiming for. Problems in the Russian economy are piling up and cannot be overlooked. They portray Putin’s regime as extremely incompetent, having returned Russia to general decay and misery because of its special operation. But can Ukrainian pressure on the financing of Russia’s military machine actually work? Economist Oleksii Plastun expects, according to the Ukrainian website ZN.ua, that Russia could be hit by a wave of loan defaults, bankruptcies, factory closures, layoffs and other signs of a systemic economic crisis. Already in April and May, drone activity reached such a level, according to his analysis, that it was possible to count down the months, if not days, before systemic problems emerged in Russia’s oil industry and beyond. Military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko told Denník N that the impact on the Russian economy was extensive: Export collapse: Exports of Russian petroleum products fell by more than 50 percent year-on-year, while refineries in European Russia have almost entirely lost their operational capacity. Financial losses: Russia is losing crucial tax revenues for the budget from which it finances the war. Instead of earning money from exports, it must spend money on purchasing fuel. Disruption to logistics and business: Attacks on logistics hubs, such as Wildberries and Ozon, which were also used to store dual-use goods and train drone operators, are causing enormous losses to Russian business owners. This is leading to loan defaults and laying the groundwork for a banking crisis. “It is important to understand that this is a war of attrition. Russia’s population serves both as a resource for the front and as a source of financing for the war — for example, through increases in VAT. These strikes will not stop Russia in a month or even a year, but its resources and capabilities will steadily diminish,” the analyst from Odesa said. Videos of the day Attack on Russian operators. Ukrainian Su-27 fighter pilots attacked a warehouse and production facility for unmanned aerial vehicles in Vuhledar, one of the pilots said. What are the losses No update. By Tuesday (25 August), Russia had visibly lost 24,035 pieces of heavy equipment (24,005 on Monday, 17 August). Of these, Ukrainians destroyed 19,005 (18,977), 999 (997) were damaged, 1,193 (1,193) were abandoned by their crews, and the Ukrainian army captured 2,838 (2,838). This includes 4,440 (4,437) tanks, of which 3,346 (3,343) were destroyed in combat. Ukraine lost 12,018 (11,916) pieces of equipment, of which 9,429 (9,333) were destroyed, 697 (695) damaged, 694 (692) abandoned and 1,198 (1,196) captured. This includes 1,456 (1,450) tanks, of which 1,117 (1,111) were destroyed in combat. Note: Neither side regularly reports its own dead or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, but these cannot be independently verified. This overview uses data from the Oryx project, which has compiled a list of equipment losses documented exclusively by photographs since the start of the war.