Russia’s Security Council has reportedly moved to lift an unspoken prohibition on assassinating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his senior military commanders.
The closed-door session convened Thursday in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, 72, present alongside members of his negotiating team fresh from peace talks in Abu Dhabi, representatives of the Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry, and the full Security Council, according to multiple pro-Kremlin outlets. The meeting came on the heels of Putin’s two-hour discussion with U.S. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.
The reported policy shift follows Ukraine’s tenth recent strike against the Baltic Sea oil hub of Ust-Luga near St. Petersburg, a critical export route that helps the Kremlin circumvent international sanctions and move oil to Asian markets. St. Petersburg holds particular significance as Putin’s hometown, making the repeated drone attacks a deeply personal affront to the Russian leader. Regional authorities in Leningrad Oblast, where the city sits, have reportedly poured 24 billion rubles — roughly $300 million — into air defense systems alone.
During the Thursday session, Russian security officials delivered increasingly dire warnings about the state of the country’s defenses. They cautioned that Moscow was exhausting its military funds trying to repel Kyiv’s drone swarms, and that Russia’s own retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure had failed to serve as any meaningful deterrent.
“It is pointless to fight the endless swarm of drones — it is necessary to destroy the very chain of decision-making,” one Russian official reportedly said, according to Blokot.
Security officials concluded they would prefer to target Ukraine’s leadership directly rather than continue the defensive struggle, the reports indicate, citing senior government sources familiar with the deliberations.
“The destruction of other people’s heating does not stop attacks on our refineries, because the people who give orders feel completely safe under the protection of Moscow’s unspoken ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ with the West,” a Russian source said.
The reported options under consideration include deploying heavy hypersonic weapons against bunkers and motorcades used by Ukrainian leaders and top army commanders.
The Kremlin mounted multiple assassination attempts against Zelensky, 47, during the opening phase of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Those efforts reportedly ceased sometime in 2023 after Putin conveyed through intermediaries that he would halt the targeting. That informal arrangement now appears to be unraveling as Ukraine has demonstrated its capacity to strike far inside Russian territory with sustained precision.
Putin’s conversation with Witkoff and Kushner immediately preceded the Security Council meeting, though no details of that discussion have emerged publicly. The Russian negotiating team present at Thursday’s session had just returned from talks in Abu Dhabi, where discussions over a potential settlement to the three-year war have continued in fits and starts.
