Russia says it will intensify strikes on Kyiv and other regions
The defence ministry links the threat to Zelenskiy's pledge to keep hitting Russian oil refineries
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Russia's defence ministry says strikes on Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine will intensify, citing recent remarks by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to TASS.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine will continue targeting Russian oil refineries, not civilian sites, and that Ukrainian forces have stabilised the front near Donetsk under an operation he calls Vivaldi.
Russian strikes on Saturday killed at least six people across Ukraine and damaged a bridge in Kyiv. Moscow said at the time it would keep up what it called mass retaliatory strikes. Moldova has also reported Russian weapons crossing into its airspace.
The threat comes even as Putin pitched a Lukoil asset deal directly to US officials Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on September 5. The defence ministry's citing of Zelenskiy's remarks as justification points to no near-term pullback in strikes, despite those parallel contacts. With Moldova's airspace already drawn into the conflict, intensified strikes on Kyiv raise the risk of the war spreading further rather than moving toward a resolution, and no new diplomatic mechanism has been introduced to contain it.