INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT

06.18.2026: Making Moscow Untenable

June 18th, 2026

Greetings and Happy Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current predicament is beginning to resemble the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West who cries out, “You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! I’m melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

Just replace ‘good little girl’ with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and ‘my beautiful wickedness’ with Putin - and you have it.

Photo Credit: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukraine Hits Crimean Railway Bridge, Fuel Depots in Major Strike on Russian Logistics

Zelensky is making what was once considered safe zones for Russia’s elite – his hometown of St. Petersburg and the capital city of Moscow – untenable, and reiterated that “Our long-range sanctions once again reached the Moscow region.”the

Zelensky has chosen to fight fire with fire, telling Putin:

“If Ukraine is burning, your Moscow will burn too. We do NOT want this war and NEVER wanted it, and everyone knows that. We certainly do NOT want Ukraine to burn because of the enemy. But if Ukraine is burning, your Moscow will burn as well. So let me stress once again: the time has come to end this aggression, the time has come to end this war.”

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SAINT PETERSBURG INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC FORUM OF 2026 (SPIEF 2026)

After Zelensky’s initial strike on the St. Petersburg oil terminal and the Kronstadt naval base at the onset of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum of 2026 (SPIEF 2026), he sent an open letter to Putin proposing an immediate ceasefire along the current frontline and a face-to-face bilateral meeting in a third country to end the war.

Photo Credit: Ukraine Ministry of Defense. Kyiv put on its own big show in St. Petersburg, hitting its oil terminal Wednesday.

Putin rejected the offer, saying “I see no point in meeting. It only makes sense for the Ukrainian side to stop the advance of our armed forces. Let the experts work, develop some solutions, and then we can meet.”

Zelensky didn’t wait. His ‘experts’ went back to work and ‘developed some solutions’ by promptly striking the same set of targets again – despite Putin’s assurances that he would strengthen Russia’s air defense system.

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THE PECHERSK LAVRA MONASTERY

As we stated in The Hill this morning, “Putin’s only recourse to battlefield failures and his intelligence services’ unsuccessful attempts to interfere in elections, is nuclear saber-rattling and the launch of ballistic missiles, glide bombs, and drones against civilian targets, which include residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, markets, bomb shelters, churches and cultural centers — all war crimes or even forms of genocide.

He takes the fight to defenseless civilians.

Photo Credit: Ukrainian Culture Ministry. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery was founded in 1051 and is a prominent symbol of Ukrainian spiritual and cultural history.

On Monday, Kremlin missile and drone attacks on Kyiv hit multiple cultural sites, including the Pechersk Lavra monastery, a nearly 1,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage site.

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THE RESPONSE

Kyiv’s response came on Tuesday as world leaders gathered in Geneva, Switzerland for the 2026 Group of Seven (G7) summit. Zelensky took the fight directly to Moscow – against Russia’s principal revenue source that finances their war against Ukraine: oil.

Photo Credit: Moskva News Agency. A fire burning at a Gazprom Neft-operated oil refinery in Moscow.

Ukrainian drones once again successfully penetrated Russian airspace to find their targets in Moscow — the Gazprom Neft-operated oil refinery. Zelensky called the attack a “just response to Russian strikes and prolonging the war by the Kremlin.”

Then again today – in spectacular fashion, blowing the lid off an oil tank at the Moscow Oil Refinery.

Watch the video here:

Rapid Report@RapidReport2025

WATCH: Ukrainian drones strike Kapotnya refinery in Moscow causing massive fires and thick black smoke

8:09 AM · Jun 18, 2026 · 1.79K Views

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4 Replies · 11 Reposts · 24 Likes

/video/1

As Roman Sheremeta explained in his LinkedIn post today:

The Moscow Oil Refinery is a key facility in Russia’s oil refining industry, with a processing capacity of up to 11 million tons of oil per year. The plant supplies up to 40% of Moscow’s gasoline needs and about 50% of its diesel fuel.

As a result of systematic Ukrainian strikes, Russia’s oil production has fallen to a yearly low, while gasoline output has dropped to its lowest level in 16 years.

Also, for the first time in history, Russia has been forced to import fuel from abroad. Read that twice. Russia – the world’s second-largest oil exporter – is now buying refined gasoline from Asia because it can no longer reliably produce enough of its own.

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THE EFFECT IN RUSSIA

There are plumes of black smoke towering over the Moscow skyline, power outages, internet and cell phone disruptions, fuel shortages, flight delays and more.

This video captures most of it:

In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – safety and security have been lost. So too has the Russian people’s trust - and confidence in the government’s ability to defend them.

Photo Credit: Kathy Brodie. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The war in Ukraine has arrived on their front doorsteps. This is not exactly the winning Putin has sold Russians for the past four years.

Zelensky has ‘leveled the bubble’ and the Kremlin does not have an answer. Life in St. Petersburg and Moscow is about to become ‘untenable.’

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THE EFFECT IN BELARUS

From his perch in Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has seen Zelensky’s open letter and witnessed the multiple drone strikes on St. Petersburg and Moscow.

According to Lukashenko, “So they’re [Ukraine] striking targets. They’re not hitting the front. The Ukrainians are striking civilians, historical and cultural monuments, oil refineries, and factories. They’re striking all over Russia, all the way to the Urals, with drones. That’s the kind of war we have now.”

As we stated in The Washington Star, Lukashenko owes his political existence to Putin, has stated his country’s military and defense cooperation with Russia remains intact, and that Minsk is prepared to “defend Moscow, if necessary” – just not in Ukraine or against NATO.

Nonetheless, he is likely wondering: if Putin cannot defend St. Petersburg or Moscow, how is he going to defend Minsk? The short answer - he is not.

Not to mention his track record of coming to the assistance of his allies – Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.

In the Russian model, loyalty travels one way – and that’s up. When you exceed your usefulness to the State or become a burden – you are simply discarded.

And that likely explains comments recently made by Lukashenko as he tries to put some distance between himself and Putin.

Two weeks ago he ruled out sending troops to fight in Ukraine, saying his soldiers would not become “cannon fodder for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war” and that he “did not want to” fight Poland, Lithuania, or Ukraine.

On Tuesday he acknowledged that “Belarus is very vulnerable militarily, because Belarus is exposed to the Ukrainian military like we are in the open palm of their hand. We fully understand that our key life-support facilities – industrial and logistical –would come under attack.”

And he doesn’t want any of that – specifically, being on the receiving end of the “500 potential targets in Belarus” identified by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Commander Robert Brovdi, who warned Lukashenko that he would strike should Belarus take “actions that could further draw Minsk into the war.”

Lukashenko would later apologize for any remarks he made about Zelensky in the past that may have been offensive, saying “Perhaps I overdid it here and there.”

The Belarusian dictator senses ‘change in air’ and is likely hedging his bets – his keeper is in trouble.

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MAKING MOSCOW UNTENABLE

Zelensky is exposing the Kremlin’s vulnerabilities to the Russian people - and to a global audience as well.

Striking Moscow is the next step.

Making both St. Petersburg and Moscow untenable puts additional pressure on Putin and the Kremlin to come to the negotiation table on terms favorable to Kyiv. Zelensky’s end state remains the same - the complete withdrawal of Russian ground forces from Ukraine and the restoration of all sovereign Ukrainian territory, to include Crimea.

Putin can no longer defend his own skies, and will not come to the defense of his allies. From projecting strength and power – to becoming ‘grandpa in his bunker.’ He has become by all accounts, “dead man walking.”

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ICYMI #1

In our weekly Thursday national security column at The Hill in Washington, D.C., we examined how Putin’s reign in Russia is beginning to crumble.

You can read it here.

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ICYMI #2

In our daily weekday foreign affairs column at The Washington Star in Washington, D.C., we penned a story around the already iconic photo below. Moscow, literally and figuratively speaking is losing its top at the hands of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Photo credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry. A meme was born when Ukraine knocked the lid off the major Moscow oil refinery on June 18^th, 2926.

You can read it here.

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ICYMI #3

Mark was on Al Qahera News in Cairo, Egypt today. He discussed the mounting fallout between the U.S. and Israel over the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezkeshian.

You can watch it here.

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Thank you for reading. We will see you tomorrow. Please subscribe, comment & share. We truly appreciate it!

Jon & Mark

Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.