Putin warns Europe against sending troops to Ukraine amid escalating cross-border strikes

Vladimir Putin on Friday warned Europe against sending troops to Ukraine, saying it would amount to “war with Russia”.

Speaking on the sidelines of Brics summit in India, the Russian president said Moscow did not pose a threat to other European nations.

“There is no such threat, and there has never been. We are not threatening European countries, nor are we going to threaten them. Why would we? No one seems to even consider that we have no grounds for any conflict with Europe.”

He blamed "Western globalist elites" for his invasion of Ukraine, saying they had disregarded Russia's opposition to ‌Nato's eastward expansion.

Meanwhile, Russian strikes on two petrol stations in Kyiv killed two people and further attacks in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia killed three.

The attacks also left at least 12 people, including a 12-year-old boy, injured in Kyiv, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the strikes, saying they were becoming “increasingly terrorist in nature”.

Ukraine in turn launched a drone attack on Russia's Tula region overnight and another on Kursk on Friday, killing two people.

The US House of Representatives will begin consideration next week of a sweeping Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, which has passed the Senate but faces stiff opposition from House Democrats.

The House Rules Committee said it scheduled a meeting to consider the measure for Monday afternoon. Approval by the Republican-majority Rules Committee would pave the way for a vote in the full chamber later in the week.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican who died in July, was among Ukraine's most outspoken allies in Congress. His bill would sanction Russian officials and authorise stiff tariffs on China, India and other countries to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas. Its passage would be seen as an important message to Ukraine – and Russia – of US support for the government in Kyiv in its defence against Russia's full-scale invasion.

The bill aims to increase economic pressure on Moscow by cutting off sources of revenue used to fund the war.

Vladimir Putin on Friday said Western countries had disregarded Russia's opposition to ‌Nato's eastward expansion.

After a Russia-friendly president was forced to flee Ukraine in 2014, he said the West "immediately set the goal of dragging Ukraine into Nato. And this ultimately turned out to be the main reason for today's tragic events in Ukraine”.

"It is the Western globalist elites that are to blame for this, though they keep shifting the blame onto us all the time."

Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Friday that events in Europe, including the far-right victory in a German state election, were the result of "system errors" committed by globalists in the West.

Putin, speaking to reporters in a pool report on the first day of a visit to India, also said the conflict in Ukraine was the fault of the West for constantly putting pressure on Moscow and seeking to "drag" Ukraine into the Nato alliance.

The Russian president said he would offer no comment on Sunday's top result for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, but then added that Western elites were to blame for events on the continent, including the election.

"I think that everything happening in Europe right now is basically the result of system errors by the so-called West ... the Western globalists in politics, security, and economics," Putin said.

An explosion caused a fire at a weapons storage site in central Bulgaria overnight, local media and officials said on Saturday, the second blaze at a munitions facility in the past few weeks.

No one was reported injured in the blaze, which broke out near the village of Tsareva Livada and could be seen lighting up the night sky in videos broadcast locally.

"At the moment, the fire is on the territory of the storage base of the factory. It is moving from warehouse to warehouse," Gabrovo regional governor Kristina Sidorova told journalists in the early hours of Saturday.

Local media reported that the fire was at a site run by EMCO, which experienced an explosion at another facility last month, citing an EMCO company official. Reuters was not immediately able to reach EMCO for comment.

EMCO is run by Bulgarian arms trader Emilian Gebrev, who Bulgarian prosecutors allege was the target of past attacks on his facilities by Russian operatives.

In 2024, Bulgaria issued an arrest warrant for six Russian citizens accused of involvement in the destruction of EMCO arms depots that were storing munitions for export to Ukraine and Georgia between 2011 and 2020.

Prosecutors at the time said that they could reasonably assume links between the blasts in Bulgaria, an attempted poisoning of Gebrev in 2015, and munitions depot explosions in the Czech Republic in 2014. Moscow has dismissed the allegations.

Ukraine has attacked Russia's largest online retailers and oil refineries, often deep inside the country, as well as energy and fuel logistics in regions of its own territory occupied by Russian forces.

Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had hit an enterprise and an oil industry facility in the Saratov and Volgograd regions. He also reported strikes on unnamed targets in other regions and the Black Sea.

Dmitry Milyayev, the governor of Russia's Tula region, said two people were killed and three injured in Ukrainian drone attacks overnight. A 37-year-old man had been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in the Kursk region, its governor said.

Russian e-commerce company Ozon said a drone had caused a fire at its logistics hub in the central city of Saratov. More than two dozen warehouses owned by Ozon and fellow online retailer Wildberries have been hit in recent attacks which Ukraine casts as part of a campaign against economic infrastructure underpinning Russia's war.

Ukraine's military said it hit an oil refinery in Saratov. Two people were injured in a missile attack that hit two residential buildings and damaged an industrial facility in Volgograd, south of Saratov on the Volga River, local authorities said, without identifying the industrial facility.

The two dead in Kyiv were at one of the two petrol stations that was attacked, officials said, one by a double-tap strike.

Friday's strikes followed what appeared to be the first attack on a Kyiv petrol station a day earlier. In recent months, Russia hit some 300 petrol stations, mainly in or near Ukraine's frontline regions.

"There is no military objective behind such strikes. This is terror of the civilian population," said Bohdan Kukura, CEO of Ukrainian oil company Ukrnafta.

A further 12 people, including a 12-year-old boy, were injured in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

An attack on a Kyiv residential block injured eight people overnight. Zelenskiy said Russia had hit a building used by Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar in Kyiv, and there were strikes in eight other Ukrainian regions. Kyivstar's network continued to operate, the company said.

Ukraine also carried out drone attacks on Russia, killing two people in the Tula region overnight and one on Friday in the Kursk region, local officials said.

With fighting on the front line largely stalled more than four and a half years into the war in Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine increasingly have struck logistics and other economic targets in recent weeks to try to damage the other's war effort.

Russia attacked two Kyiv petrol stations with jet-powered drones early on Friday, killing two people in an escalation of strikes that president Volodymyr Zelensky said were becoming "increasingly terrorist in nature".

Three more people were killed in Russian strikes in southeastern Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions and in Kharkiv in the northeast, according to the governors of those regions.

The European Commission has approved a disbursement of 6.1 billion euros (£5.2bn) to Ukraine, which it can use to buy Patriot air defence missiles and other supplies.

The funds are part of the 90 billion euros (£77.2bn) support loan the EU has promised Ukraine.

The new disbursement means the 28.3 billion euro in military support promised from the loan for 2026 has now been allocated, the Commission said.

Portugal has declared that it supports the use of frozen Russian assets to assist Ukraine, but is understanding of Belgium’s concerns over the financial risks, foreign minister Paulo Rangel said.

Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear hosts most of the roughly €200 billion ($232.54 billion) in frozen Russian assets held in Europe.

Last year, when the European Commission proposed using the assets to support a Ukraine loan, Belgium opposed the plan due to concerns over guarantees against the possibility of lawsuits and Russian compensation claims. It demanded the risks be shared across the EU.

"Portugal is favourable and will never be an obstacle to the use of those €200 billion," Mr Rangel said on Thursday.

But he added that the concerns in Brussels were “truly pertinent” and hoped for a “very constructive solution”.