Moscow warned that European troops in Ukraine would mean war with Russia as a new wave of strikes killed eight civilians and wounded dozens more.
Moscow delivered its bluntest warning yet on the prospect of a European military presence in Ukraine, declaring that any deployment of European troops would amount to "a war with Russia." The threat landed Friday on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in India, and it came as a new wave of Russian strikes killed eight civilians and wounded dozens more across Ukraine overnight.
The timing was no accident. European leaders have signaled their willingness to commit to a potential peacekeeping force as part of any postwar security guarantee for Kyiv, a plan the Kremlin has repeatedly described as unacceptable. Russian President Vladimir Putin used the summit stage to draw a hard line.
"Now they're talking about how they're considering sending troops into Ukraine. That means a war with Russia," Putin told reporters at the BRICS gathering of emerging economies. The remark was aimed squarely at European capitals weighing a boots-on-the-ground mission.
At the same time, Putin insisted Moscow poses no threat to the continent. "We do not threaten, nor do we intend to threaten, European countries," he said, adding that "there is no such threat and never has been."
The contradiction was hard to miss: a warning of war in one breath, a denial of any threat in the next. It is a formulation the Kremlin has leaned on repeatedly as it presses for settlement terms favorable to Moscow.
The rhetoric was matched by firepower. Two people were killed and one wounded when drones struck a residential area overnight in the city of Zaporizhzhia, according to regional head Ivan Fedorov. In Kryvyi Rih, one person was killed and three others were wounded.
The Black Sea port of Odesa absorbed what regional head Oleh Kiper called a "massive attack," with 35 people wounded overnight. A residential high-rise was hit, its upper floors completely destroyed.
Elsewhere, three people were killed Saturday when drones struck cars in Kramatorsk, in Ukraine's partially occupied Donetsk region. Two more died in a Russian attack on a grocery store in the Zhytomyr region.
Officials say Moscow's intensifying air campaign, using ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones to pierce air defenses, is aimed at Ukraine's power grid ahead of winter, an effort meant to demoralize civilians as temperatures fall.
Ukraine hit back. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces struck two chemical industry facilities inside Russia, one in Samara and one in Perm. Russian independent outlet Astra reported drone attacks on chemical plants in both regions.
The war's consequences have already reached Ukraine's western borders. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said two incidents along Ukraine's frontiers with Poland and Moldova this week amounted to a preview of intensified Russian provocations at crossing points into Europe.
Two people died when Russian drones hit the Starokozache border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova on Tuesday night. A "direct threat" to a Polish-Ukrainian crossing point the following night was avoided only through cooperation between Warsaw and Kyiv, Tusk said.
For NATO members, the episodes are a reminder that the risk of spillover is not theoretical. A peacekeeping mission that puts European troops inside Ukraine would test that risk directly, which is precisely what the Kremlin's warning addressed.
Zelenskyy said in an interview published Saturday that he would meet with Putin if both leaders were invited to the Group of 20 summit in December in Miami. Putin's foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said the possibility of Putin attending had not yet been discussed.
The Kremlin has said in the past that Zelenskyy can come to Moscow if he wants a meeting. Kyiv has rejected that proposal.
The Trump administration has kept pressure on both sides to move toward a negotiated end to the war, with U.S. envoys shuttling between Kyiv and Moscow in pursuit of a settlement. That effort now faces a familiar obstacle: Moscow's willingness to talk while continuing to strike.
What happens next may hinge on whether Europe formalizes its peacekeeping pledge. If it does, Moscow has already said what it believes that would mean. If it stalls, Ukraine faces another winter under an escalating air campaign with its defenses stretched thin. Watch the G20 invitation, the pace of strikes on the power grid, and any new movement at the border crossings with Poland and Moldova.
Moscow warned that European troops in Ukraine would mean war with Russia as a new wave of strikes killed eight civilians and wounded dozens more.
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