President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Vladimir Putin personally ordered Russia's military leadership to abandon the remaining constraints on its air war, telling his commanders that "there are no rules now" as Moscow intensifies strikes on Ukraine's cities, schools, hospitals and energy system. Speaking to the Financial Times from the bomb shelter of a Kyiv school that a Russian jet-powered drone had hit only hours earlier, Zelensky said Ukrainian intelligence had intercepted the order, which Kyiv dates to September.
An order Kyiv says came in September
According to Zelensky, the instruction was issued at the start of September, just as Russia began escalating its bombardment of the capital and other major cities. The school from which he spoke had been struck on Thursday morning; its director said 104 students and 60 teachers survived because they reached the underground shelter before the drone hit. Ukrainian authorities said the weapon's 50-kilogram warhead pierced the floor but failed to detonate, damaging the building and starting a fire.
Zelensky called attacks on educational institutions "a deliberate tactic", arguing that Russia, unable to occupy Ukraine on the battlefield, is now pursuing "massive attacks and massive killings" to pressure civilians and empty the cities. Kyiv has not publicly released the intercepts behind the claim, and their contents could not be independently verified. The Kremlin denies deliberately targeting civilians; spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that "Russia's armed forces do not strike schools or hospitals." Independent tallies point the other way: the World Health Organization has documented more than 3,000 attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities, and Ukraine's education ministry says over 4,700 schools and universities have been hit since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
A winter strategy aimed at Ukraine's biggest cities
Ukrainian and European security officials say the main targets are Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Lviv, the western city near the Polish border. The aim, in Zelensky's account, is to isolate those cities as winter sets in — going after bridges, data centres, internet and mobile networks, hospitals, kindergartens, schools and universities — and to drive residents away. "They want Ukrainians to leave the capital … and show that if you don't have the capital you don't have the country," he told reporters separately.
Kyiv officials also say Moscow intends to strike nuclear energy facilities and sever them from the grid to force Ukraine to accept Russian demands in early 2027, and to trigger a new flow of refugees into Poland. With the front line largely static and Russia still unable to capture the Donbas, the strike campaign has become the Kremlin's main instrument of pressure — making civilian life unbearable rather than winning ground.
The air-defence race behind the warning
The warning underscores how fast the aerial war is evolving. Zelensky said Russia had launched some 500 drones in a single day, around half of them jet-powered types that are far harder to intercept. Ukraine is short of engines for its own interceptor drones, and while he described US-made F-16 jets as highly effective against the new jet drones, roughly half of the aircraft are abroad for repairs and maintenance at any given time. Kyiv wants that maintenance work moved into Ukraine so the jets can return to combat sooner.
Zelensky also criticised the United States and Europe for, in his words, doing "not enough" to apply economic and diplomatic leverage on Moscow. Ukraine has spent months striking back at Russian oil refineries, ports and industrial sites, contributing to fuel shortages inside Russia — but the asymmetry remains: Russia can aim hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities each week, while Ukraine's ability to shield them still depends on interceptors and aircraft it does not control.
Whether or not the intercepted order is ever published, the pattern Kyiv describes is already visible in the strike data: schools, hospitals, bridges and power infrastructure hit again and again as the heating season approaches. For Ukraine's cities, the coming winter now looks set to be fought as much in shelters and repair yards as on the front line — and, if Zelensky is right, with an opponent who has formally stopped pretending otherwise.
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