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KYIV – October 3, 2026 – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence has intercepts showing Vladimir Putin told his commanders in September that “there are no rules now,” and he said it from a bomb shelter in a Kyiv school a Russian drone had just hit.
The Financial Times interview is the new claim. Zelenskyy said the order lifted constraints on earlier air campaigns and lines up with the jump in strikes on schools, hospitals and data centres. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the paper Russian forces do not strike civilian infrastructure. Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa are the main targets in the assessment Zelenskyy and European officials described. Lviv, the logistics hub near Poland, is on the same list. Ukrainian officials also say the winter plan includes switchyards that feed the operating nuclear plants, a way to take them off the grid without a direct hit on a reactor, and that one aim is a new wave of refugees into the EU.
On the ground Friday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian strikes forced the full or partial closure of three of Kyiv’s six road bridges over the Dnipro. Traffic jammed. One drone hit the Southern Bridge on Thursday while a metro train was crossing. Overnight, Russia sent more than 100 drones, nearly half of them jet-powered. A high-rise in Darnytskyi was hit. One person was killed.
Ukraine’s top diplomat said Kyiv has separate proposals for a partial truce from the United States, India, Turkey and Egypt — a halt on energy strikes and on Black Sea shipping. Putin already called that kind of swap “ridiculous” at Valdai. Zelenskyy’s line to El País, in the same damaged school: Putin is not afraid of Europeans, and the escalation will get worse as the U.S. midterms approach.
A school, a bridge, and an intercepted order. That is the negotiation as of Saturday.
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