Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments published yesterday that Kyiv had opened ‘Pandora’s box’ with its strikes on Russian economic targets, saying that Russia would hit back at Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors”.
Ukraine has this summer escalated a campaign of drone strikes targeting Russian economic infrastructure, including oil refineries and online retailers’ warehouses, seeking to destroy infrastructure it says is central to Russia’s war effort.
Russia has responded with strikes against Ukrainian economic infrastructure, including Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea.
“The Kyiv regime set out to damage our economy. What did it do? It opened this Pandora’s box itself. Well then, expect a response targeting your most sensitive economic sectors,” Putin said in comments to a Russian state television journalist.
He said that the strikes, which have jeopardised Ukraine’s agricultural exports, would not cause global food shortages, because Russia would be able to replace Ukrainian exports, even as Kyiv has targeted Russian grain export infrastructure.
“We do face challenges regarding the shipment of our goods, but we will resolve these issues. Consequently, there will be no shortage on the global market,” Putin said.
Russia and Ukraine had previously adhered to a Turkish-brokered deal to protect grain exports on the Black Sea. But Russia exited the deal in 2023.
The Russian leader also restated his position that Moscow is open to peace talks, but only on the basis of ‘realities on the ground,’ rather than what he called ‘exotic’ proposals that he said had been made by Ukraine via intermediaries.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones killed at least 10 people in attacks against targets across Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including a warehouse owned by online retailer Ozon and an industrial facility, Russian officials said.
Russia and Ukraine are both ramping up drone campaigns aiming to cripple each other’s economic infrastructure, often striking targets far beyond the war’s front lines, as fighting on the battlefield grinds towards four and a half years.
In a post on Telegram yesterday, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, governor of Russia’s Samara region, said that an elderly woman had been killed in a strike on the city of Novokuibyshevsk, which he said caused damage to industrial facilities. Ukraine’s military said it had struck the city’s oil refinery, causing a fire.
Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, said in a statement on Telegram that work at its Samara region logistics centre in the town of Chapayevsk had been halted after the strike, which it said caused injuries.
The attack is the first on Ozon following weeks of drone strikes on its larger rival Wildberries, which Ukraine has cast as part of a wider campaign against economic infrastructure underpinning the Russian war in Ukraine.
Elsewhere, in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said that three people, two of them children, had been killed and another adult was wounded in a strike on the Sea of Azov port town of Yeysk. He said a fire had broken out at an unnamed facility at the town’s port.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said two people had been killed and 13 wounded in Ukrainian attacks.
In Bryansk, another frontier region, four people were wounded, the local governor said.
On the Crimean peninsula, seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, the Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said that at least two people had been killed and 10 injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a city bus.
In Luhansk region, an eastern Ukrainian province almost all of which is controlled by Russia, Moscow-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said that two civilians, including a 16-year-old boy, had been killed and nine more were wounded.
Russia’s defence ministry said it downed a total of 457 Ukrainian drones overnight.
In another development, French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to accelerate the delivery of new French equipment to Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday, following a call in which they discussed Kyiv’s shortage of air defences.
Zelenskiy said he had spoken for almost two hours with Macron, who expressed his willingness to intercede on Ukraine’s behalf with allies who had stocks of US-made Patriot interceptors.
The Patriot air defence system is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of downing high-speed ballistic missiles used by Russia in its war in Ukraine.
As Russia has escalated airstrikes, Zelenskiy has repeatedly appealed to allies to provide more of the interceptor missiles for the system.
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