Aug 22 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments published on Saturday that Kyiv had opened “Pandora’s box” with \u200cits strikes on Russian economic targets, saying that Russia \u200cwould hit back at Ukraine’s “most sensitive economic sectors”.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has this summer escalated a \u200bcampaign of drone strikes targeting Russian economic infrastructure, including oil refineries and online retailers’ warehouses, seeking to destroy infrastructure it says is central to Russia’s war effort.<\/p>\n
Russia has responded with strikes against Ukrainian \u200ceconomic infrastructure, including Ukrainian \u2060grain exports via the Black Sea.<\/p>\n
“The Kyiv regime set out to damage our economy. What did it \u2060do? It opened this Pandora’s box itself. Well then, expect a response targeting your most sensitive economic sectors,” Putin said in comments to \u200ba \u200bRussian state television journalist.<\/p>\n
He said that \u200bthe strikes, which have \u200cjeopardised Ukraine’s agricultural exports, would not cause global food shortages, because Russia would be able to replace Ukrainian exports, even as Kyiv has targeted Russian grain export infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“We do face challenges regarding the shipment of our goods, but we will resolve these issues. \u200cConsequently, there will be no shortage on \u200bthe global market,” Putin said.<\/p>\n
Russia and \u200bUkraine had previously adhered \u200bto a Turkish-brokered deal to protect grain exports \u200con the Black Sea. But Russia \u200bexited the deal \u200bin 2023.<\/p>\n
The Russian leader also restated his position that Moscow is open to peace talks, but only on the basis \u200bof “realities on the \u200cground”, rather than what he called “exotic” proposals that he \u200bsaid had been made by Ukraine via intermediaries.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Felix \u200bLight; Editing by Joe Bavier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug 22 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments published on Saturday that Kyiv had opened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[212,11266,11264,11267,7009,11265,25,26,33],"class_list":["post-31749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-drone-strikes","tag-economic-infrastructure","tag-economic-sectors","tag-economic-targets","tag-grain-exports","tag-pandora39s-box","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}