Russia’s most influential banker has issued an unusually direct appeal for the war in Ukraine to be brought to a swift close, in a rare public signal of unease from inside the country’s financial elite.
German Gref, the chief executive of state-controlled Sberbank, said Russians are increasingly anxious about the country’s deteriorating economic outlook, with the strain deepened by the war and by Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Speaking in an interview with state television, Gref said the concern felt across the country was widely shared: “I think what’s worrying every one of us is one and the same thing.”
He added: “I don’t think there’s a single person who isn’t concerned about anything other than a rapid end of hostilities, that’s clear.”
His comments amount to an extraordinary public plea at a time when polling cited by the Kyiv-based Institute for Conflict Study and Analysis suggests 81 per cent of Russians want the war to end — the highest level recorded since the conflict began.
Gref has previously warned that the war, and the vast military spending attached to it, are creating severe pressure across the Russian economy. The country has faced petrol queues, falling wages, layoffs, rising prices and punishing interest rates.
In a warning directed at Putin, the Sberbank chief said: “We have already overcooled the economy.”
The remarks come as Ukraine’s defence minister has also warned in a letter that Kyiv may have a battlefield window of between six and nine months to seize an advantage over Russia.
Ukraine has been aggressively taking the fight to Russia, last night striking an oil facility in the city of Ufa, which sits more than 800 miles behind the front lines.
German Gref, who heads up the state-controlled Sberbank, said that Russians are deeply concerned by the worsening economic conditions of the country
Ukraine has been striking key Russian facilities, like the Kapotnya Oil Refinery which sits just ten miles from Moscow
Countless Russian businessmen, executives and politicians have met gruesome, and often suspicious, fates in the past, ranging from apparently self-inflicted fatal gunshot wounds to falling out of high windows.
The most infamous of Putin’s critics to have been killed is dissident Alexei Navalny, who was starved and mistreated for months in an Arctic prison before he died in February 2024.
In February, the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands accused the Russian government of killing Navalny with a neurotoxin that comes from poison dart frogs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today said, as Kyiv steps up its deep strikes in Russia: ‘Every day, our plan for imposing Ukrainian long-range sanctions is being implemented.
‘This is an entirely just response to everything Russia is doing against us.’
Zelensky also reported a strike on a ‘strategic’ Russian military-industrial facility in the Penza region, involved in making components for missile weaponry used by Moscow in attacks on Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military General Staff named the plant as part of Russian state space corporation Roscosmos. It said it makes sensors for cruise and ballistic missiles, components for aircraft avionics, and equipment for reconnaissance satellites. The General Staff also reported strikes on two bridges in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as a logistics crossing in the Donetsk region.
The country has stepped up its attacks on Russian military supply routes as part of a mounting campaign to target Moscow’s logistics far behind the frontline, an effort analysts have said is helping slow its war machine after more than four years of conflict.
Ukraine’s defence ministry said that its forces hit 11 oil refineries, as well as fuel logistics facilities, military factories, and other targets in June.
A building in Druzhkivka, Ukraine, in ruins following a Russian attack on June 30, 2026
Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian air strike, in the Ukrainian town of Kramatorsk
Separately, the country’s security service, the SBU, said it struck hangars housing Russian fighter jets at an airfield in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Last week, Zelensky said he had approved a 40-day campaign to ‘influence’ Russia to end its war against Ukraine, now in its fifth year.
Ukraine’s top military commander also said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday that his forces were preparing for a possible new Russian attack from the north, but any attempt to advance on Kyiv was unlikely.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, interviewed on TSN Ukrainian television, also said an attack from neighbouring Belarus was unlikely after weeks of Ukrainian allegations that Moscow was trying to press its ally to play a greater role in the war.
‘The most likely scenario, and this is confirmed by several data sources, is possible offensive action in the north from the territory of Russia, from the Bryansk region,’ Syrskyi said.
‘This is a realistic option, of course, and we are preparing for it.’
The aim of such an operation, he said, was not to try to move on Kyiv as Russian forces had attempted to do after their February 2022 invasion before withdrawing and focusing on the Donbas region in the east.
Instead, they would try to seize territory in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region and draw Ukrainian forces engaged elsewhere along the 775-mile front line.
Such a strategy would amount to ‘stretching the front and depriving us of reserves’.
But Belarus, which allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to use its territory in launching his initial push into Ukraine, was unlikely to agree to further involvement, he said.
Zelensky has for weeks warned Belarus against embarking on such a venture.
A Russian TOS-1 Solntsepyok heavy flamethrower rocket launcher fires towards Ukrainian positions on Tuesday
A rescuer evacuates a resident Valentina Kolokolova, 76, from her apartment building hit by a Russian air strike in the town of Kramatorsk
‘In view of recent events, I don’t think the Belarusian leadership would opt to use their own territory and give it to the aggressor to use as a staging area for an offensive operation,’ Syrskyi said. ‘At the same time, of course, we are taking this possibility into account as well.’
Last month Zelensky gave Belarus, under veteran President Alexander Lukashenko, a week to dismantle relay stations Kyiv he said were being used to attack Ukraine. Zelensky has since said the stations are no longer operating.
In his comments to the broadcaster, Syrskyi also said there were indications that Russian troops were exhausted and the intensity of frontline battles was declining.
He said Russian frontline activity had declined by 30 per cent while Ukrainian forces pressed on with a campaign of long-range strikes against Russian targets, mainly linked to the oil industry.
