Russia strikes Ukraine after Putin “Pandora’s box” warning

Ukraine has “opened Pandora’s box” with its long-range attacks on Russian sites, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said, shortly before Moscow launched fresh attacks on Ukraine overnight into Sunday.

Ukraine “has set the goal of harming our economy,” Putin said on Saturday, in remarks to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin that were then widely carried by other state media outlets.

“It was the one to open this Pandora’s box,” he added. “Here’s what you get in response—strikes on the most sensitive areas of your economy.”

Putin’s remarks came a day after Ukrainian officials said 16 people had been killed in a Russian strike on a busy shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, which is also Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home town.

Ukrainian officials said two drones hit the center shortly after one another in a “double-tap” attack, meant to target emergency responders on the scene from the initial strike. Updated figures put the number of people injured at 140 on Sunday.

Zelensky called the attack “despicable,” while Ukraine’s state emergency service said it had left “another deep wound.”

Ukraine has upped its long-range drone attacks on Russia in recent months, sending drones careening into oil refineries and commercial warehouses in an attempt to hurt Russia’s economy—already lopsided from bloated defense spending—and hammer home the impact of the war for ordinary Russians.

Drones flying toward the Kremlin and Russia’s capital city have been deeply embarrassing for Putin, with recent polling showing the long-running conflict is becoming increasingly unpopular.

In turn, Russia has intensified its missile attacks on Ukraine, raining down barrages as Kyiv’s stockpiles of the vital interceptor missiles needed to shoot down these weapons run low.

Moscow has repeatedly said its strikes have targeted Ukraine’s energy and defense sectors.

Both sides accuse one another of intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure.

Putin said Russian strikes against Ukraine “are way more painful and way more devastating” than Ukrainian assaults on Russian soil.

Russia’s defense ministry has said in recent days it is targeting Ukrainian ports, and on Sunday it said it had struck Yuzhny, a port in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, with drones and damaged equipment used to unload cargo onto ships as well as five fuel and lubricant storage tanks.

Odesa regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said Russia had launched a “massive” attack on the region on Saturday afternoon local time, injuring three people.

A top official with Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s state-owned railway operator, said on Sunday a Russian drone had struck a passenger trail carrying 600 people en route to the city of Odesa. The train’s crew issued an evacuation order and no one was injured, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi said.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had attacked across the country overnight with 127 drones. Most were intercepted but 27 got through air defenses.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said it had targeted several Russian sites in Crimea into Sunday, including repair facilities and warehouses in the transit hub of Dzhankoy, and a launch site for unmanned boats in Chornomorske, on the western edge of the peninsula.

In a separate statement on Sunday, Kyiv’s military said its intelligence had confirmed a strike on the Saky air base in southern Crimea on Thursday had destroyed a Russian Su-24M jet.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and Robert Greenall