“That means a war with Russia.” Vladimir Putin said it flatly, to reporters in New Delhi on Friday,. By Saturday, Russian strikes had again hit Ukrainian cities.
The Russian president was on the sidelines of the 2026 BRICS summit, the 18th meeting of the bloc. His target was the idea, floated by some European leaders, of putting troops into Ukraine as a peacekeeping force. Moscow has repeatedly called that prospect unacceptable. Putin put it more bluntly than most. “Now they are talking about how they are thinking about bringing troops to the territory of Ukraine,” he said. “This means war with Russia.”
He insisted that Russia is no menace to its western neighbours. “There is no such threat, and there has never been,” he said, and he asked a rhetorical question of his own: why would Moscow threaten anyone? In his telling, the issues were settled after the Second World War, and what followed the collapse of the Soviet Union happened with Russian consent. Anything that cuts against those arrangements, he argued, offends Russian interests and international law.
Border incidents in the same week
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, had struck a darker note a day earlier. Two incidents on Ukraine’s frontiers with Moldova and Poland, he said, looked like a preview of more Russian provocations at crossing points into Europe. Russian drones hit the Starokozache crossing between Ukraine and Moldova on Tuesday night and two people died. The next night, Tusk said, a “direct threat” to a Polish-Ukrainian crossing was averted only because Warsaw and Kyiv worked together.
Strikes continue overnight
The air war did not pause for the summit. On Saturday, local officials reported that Russian strikes had killed eight civilians and wounded dozens more.
In Zaporizhzhia, drones hit a residential area overnight, killing two people and wounding one, according to regional head Ivan Fedorov. One person died and three were hurt in Kryvyi Rih. Odesa fared worst. Regional head Oleh Kiper described a “massive attack” that left 35 people wounded in the Black Sea port and its surroundings, and the upper floors of one residential high-rise were completely destroyed. Drones hit cars in Kramatorsk, in the partly occupied Donetsk region, and three people died there. Two more were killed when a grocery store in the Zhytomyr region came under attack.
Officials say the campaign leans on ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones and has gone after the power grid ahead of winter, an effort they read as an attempt to wear down civilians.
Ukraine hit back. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces struck two chemical industry sites in Russia, one in Samara and one in Perm. The regional governors did not immediately comment, though the independent outlet Astra reported drone attacks on chemical plants in both regions.
Talks that do not stop the war
Diplomacy ran alongside all of this. Zelenskyy told Deutsche Welle he would meet Putin if both were invited to the G20 summit in Miami in December. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Putin’s possible attendance had not been discussed. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated the standing offer: Putin could fly to Moscow to receive Zelenskyy there, a proposal Kyiv has rejected.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia is “ready for negotiations”, but that what Moscow calls its special military operation “will not be suspended during this period of negotiations.” The war began in February 2022 and is now in its fifth year.
Sources
- Putin warns Europe against sending troops to Ukraine: "That means a war with Russia" – CBS News
- "Means war with Russia": Putin warns Europe against sending troops to Ukraine – The Tribune (ANI)
