Source : Perth Now news
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Ukraine has opened “Pandora’s box” with its strikes on Russian economic targets, saying that Russia will hit back at Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors”.
Ukraine has 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 Ukraine 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.
Putin also restated his position that Russia 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.
Ukrainian drones killed at least eight civilians in a wave of strikes on Russia that also hit a warehouse owned by online retailer Ozon and an industrial facility in the Samara region, Russian regional officials said on Saturday.
The strikes came after at least 16 people were killed and more than 130 wounded on Friday when several Russian drones struck a shopping centre in central Ukraine.
In a post on Telegram, Samara governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev 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 strike is the first on Ozon, after weeks of drone attacks 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 three people, two of them children, had been killed and another adult 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.
In Luhansk, an eastern Ukrainian province almost all of which is controlled by Russia, Kremlin-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said that two civilians, including a 16-year-old boy, had been killed and nine more wounded.
Russia’s defence ministry said it downed a total of 457 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to accelerate the delivery of new French equipment in a call in which they discussed his country’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.
Ukraine is also awaiting delivery of the new Italo-French SAMP/T-NG missile defence system, which many experts say should be capable of downing ballistic missiles although it has not yet been battle-tested.
