Putin: We have stepped up strikes on Ukraine — Kyiv "opened this Pandora's box"
Putin says Russia has increased strikes and blames Kyiv for opening a "Pandora's box" as both sides suffer civilian casualties.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country has stepped up strikes on Ukraine and complained that Kyiv’s attacks have caused losses but have not changed the overall course of the war. In a televised interview he framed the recent escalation as a response to damage he says Ukraine inflicted on Russian economic and logistical targets.
Putin: Kyiv "opened this Pandora's box"
“We have intensified, as I said, we have intensified strikes on enterprises of Ukraine's defence-industrial complex, including in Kyiv. We began to respond to the enemy's actions against our civilian industry and logistics facilities. The Kyiv regime set out to damage our economy. What did it do? It itself opened this Pandora's box. Well, you know about the most sensitive sectors of the economy, which, frankly, were already on the brink of collapse,” Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, said in the interview.
Independent reporting from the battlefield shows the recent exchanges have produced civilian casualties: Russian drone and missile strikes have killed at least seven people in Ukraine, while a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's Krasnodar region killed three.
Those incidents followed a heavy Russian strike on a Ukrainian shopping centre the previous day that left at least 16 people dead and about 130 wounded, underlining the toll on non‑combatants amid intensified strikes on both sides.
Analysts note Moscow has also stepped up ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, taking advantage of a chronic shortage of Patriot air‑defence interceptors provided by the United States to Ukraine — the only system in Kyiv's inventory said to be capable of intercepting certain incoming missiles.
With both capitals trading strikes that hit civilian infrastructure and population centres, the conflict shows fresh signs of escalation and raises questions about how long Ukraine's defences can hold under mounting missile and drone pressure.
Photo: press material from the event
