A close ally of President Vladimir Putin warned Western governments on Thursday that a nuclear war would ensue if they gave the green light for Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Artillery shells sold by Indian arms-makers had been diverted by European customers to Ukraine and New Delhi had not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to 11 Indian and European government and defence industry officials, as well as a Reuters analysis of commercially available customs data.
Russian forces hit a geriatric centre in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted its energy sector in a new wave of airstrikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, said Ukrainian officials.
Putin ally warns West of nuclear war over Ukraine
A close ally of President Vladimir Putin warned Western governments on Thursday that a nuclear war would ensue if they gave the green light for Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament and a member of Putin’s Security Council, was responding to a vote in the European Parliament urging EU countries to give such approval to Kyiv.
“What the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons,” wrote Volodin on Telegram.
His message was entitled “For those who didn’t get it the first time” — an apparent reference to a warning by Putin last week that the West would be directly fighting Russia if it let Ukraine fire the long-range missiles on to Russian territory.
The Ukraine war has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which is considered to be the time when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to an intentional nuclear war.
The outgoing head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, told The Times this week that the Kremlin leader had declared “many red lines” before but not escalated conflict with the West when they were crossed. Putin’s spokesperson said his comment was dangerous and provocative.
In a non-binding resolution adopted on Thursday, the European Parliament asked EU countries to “immediately lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against legitimate military targets on Russian territory”.
Volodin wrote: “If something like this happens, Russia will give a tough response using more powerful weapons. No one should have any illusions about this.” He said it appeared to Moscow that the West had forgotten the vast sacrifices made by the Soviet Union in World War 2.
He said Europeans should understand that it would take Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, known in the West as Satan II, just three minutes and 20 seconds to strike Strasbourg, where the European Parliament meets.
Ammunition from India enters Ukraine, raising Russian ire
Artillery shells sold by Indian arms-makers had been diverted by European customers to Ukraine and New Delhi had not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to 11 Indian and European government and defence industry officials, as well as a Reuters analysis of commercially available customs data.
The transfer of munitions to support Ukraine’s defence against Russia has occurred for more than a year, according to the sources and the customs data. Indian arms export regulations limit the use of weaponry to the declared purchaser, who risks future sales being terminated if unauthorised transfers occur.
The Kremlin has raised the issue at least twice, including during a July meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Indian counterpart, said three Indian officials.
Details of the ammunition transfers were reported by Reuters for the first time.
Following the publication of this report, India’s foreign ministry described it as “speculative and misleading”.
“It implies violations by India where none exist and, hence, is inaccurate and mischievous,” said ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal on Thursday.
“India has been carrying out its defence exports taking into account its international obligations on non-proliferation and based on robust legal and regulatory framework, which includes a holistic assessment of relevant criteria, including end-user obligations and certifications.”
The foreign and defence ministries of Russia and the defence ministry of India did not respond to questions. In January, Jaiswal told a news conference that India had not sent or sold artillery shells to Ukraine.
Two Indian government and two defence industry sources told Reuters that Delhi produced only a very small amount of the ammunition being used by Ukraine, with one official estimating that it was under 1% of the total arms imported by Kyiv since the war. The news agency couldn’t determine if the munitions were resold or donated to Kyiv by European customers.
Among the European countries sending Indian munitions to Ukraine are Italy and the Czech Republic, which is leading an initiative to supply Kyiv with artillery shells from outside the European Union, according to a Spanish and a senior Indian official, as well as a former top executive at Yantra India, a state-owned company whose munitions are being used by Ukraine.
The Indian official said that Delhi was monitoring the situation. But, along with a defence industry executive with direct knowledge of the transfers, he said India had not taken any action to throttle the supply to Europe. Like most of the 20 people interviewed by Reuters, they spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish and Czech defence ministries did not respond to requests for comment.
Delhi and Washington, Ukraine’s main security backer, have recently strengthened defence and diplomatic cooperation against the backdrop of a rising China, which both regard as their main rival.
India also has warm ties with Russia, its primary arms supplier for decades, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refused to join the Western-led sanctions regime against Moscow.
But Delhi, long the world’s largest weapons importer, also sees the lengthy war in Europe as an opportunity to develop its nascent arms export sector, according to six Indian sources familiar with official thinking.
Ukraine, which is battling to contain a Russian offensive toward the eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk, has a dire shortage of artillery ammunition.
India exported just over $3-billion of arms between 2018 and 2023, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at a conference on 30 August that defence exports surpassed $2.5-billion in the last fiscal year and that Delhi wanted to increase that to about $6-billion by 2029.
Commercially available customs records show that in the two years before the February 2022 invasion, three major Indian ammunition makers — Yantra, Munitions India and Kalyani Strategic Systems — exported just $2.8-million in munitions components to Italy and the Czech Republic, as well as Spain and Slovenia, where defence contractors have invested heavily in supply chains for Ukraine.
Between February 2022 and July 2024, the figure had increased to $135.25-million, the data show, including completed munitions, which India began exporting to the four nations.
Arzan Tarapore, an India defence expert at Stanford University, said that Delhi’s push to expand its arms exports was a major factor in the transfer of its arms to Ukraine.
“Probably in the sudden recent expansion, some instances of end-user violations have occurred.”
Russia attacks geriatric centre and Ukraine’s grid
Russian forces hit a geriatric centre in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and targeted its energy sector in a new wave of air strikes on Thursday, killing at least one civilian, said Ukrainian officials.
During a daytime strike on the northern city of Sumy a Russian guided bomb hit a five-storey building, housing about 211 elderly people, regional and military officials said.
One person was killed and 12 more wounded in the attack, the interior ministry said on the Telegram messenger. Rescuers helped the disabled to leave the premises.
Images from the site shared alongside the post showed elderly patients evacuated from the damaged building lying on the ground on carpets and blankets waiting to be moved to a new place.
Overnight, Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down all 42 drones and one of four missiles launched by Russia in the latest attacks in more than 2½ years of war since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Russian forces pummelled the energy system in the Sumy region in multiple strikes this week, reducing power in some areas and forcing authorities to use backup power systems.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said power cuts had been in force in 10 regions due to air strikes and technological reasons.
Moscow has repeatedly attacked the Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, an area of a major Ukrainian incursion in which Kyiv says it seized over 100 settlements.
Three people were killed in shelling near Krasnopillia in the Sumy region on Wednesday evening and two were wounded in daytime shelling on Thursday that damaged a medical institution, said local prosecutors. Later in the day, the Russian forces used bombs to launch another attack.
Russia had taken back two more villages in Kursk, a senior commander said on Thursday, adding that Russian forces were also advancing in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian air defences went into operation in nine Ukrainian regions overnight, the air force said, and the governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region said a missile had been shot down over his region.
Six people were wounded in Kupiansk in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, and a school and a kindergarten were among the buildings damaged, said the regional governor.
An educational institution was also reported damaged in the Cherkasy region.
Russia is ramping up drone production tenfold, says Putin
Putin said on Thursday that Russia was ramping up drone production by around 10 times to nearly 1.4 million this year in a bid to ensure the Russian armed forces win in Ukraine.
Since Russia sent tens of thousands of soldiers into Ukraine in February 2022, the war has largely been a story of grinding artillery and drone strikes along a heavily fortified 1,000km front involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
The conflict has been a crucible for drone development — and an illustration of the importance of drones to modern warfare, from terrorising infantry and collecting intelligence to sabotaging infrastructure and attacking arsenals.
“In total, about 140,000 unmanned aerial vehicles of various types were delivered to the armed forces in 2023,” said Putin. “This year, the production of drones is planned to increase significantly. Well, to be more precise, almost 10 times.
“Whoever reacts faster to these demands on the battlefield wins,” Putin said at a meeting in St Petersburg about drone production.
Both Russia and Ukraine have bought drones abroad and ramped up their own production while drone videos have illustrated the horror of the battlefield, showing deadly strikes on infantry, artillery and tanks.
Inexpensive first-person view (FPV) drones — originally developed for civilian racers — are controlled by pilots on the ground and often crash into targets, laden with explosives.
For just a few hundred dollars, soldiers on both sides can inflict vast damage on the other side. A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on Russia triggered an earthquake-sized blast at a major arsenal in the Tver region on Wednesday.
Putin said that Russia was making almost weekly advances in drone technology and needed to also develop its drone defences, essentially technology which senses, confuses and then shoots down the attacking drones.
Ukraine’s debt chief keen to wrap up next round of restructuring
The next leg of Ukraine’s multibillion-dollar debt restructuring is likely to be trickier than the first but the head of the country’s debt agency told Reuters it hopes to reach a swift deal with creditors.
Kyiv deliberately left out $2.6-billion worth of costly “GDP warrants” and $825-million of the state electricity firm’s debt when it secured its $20-billion sovereign rework last month. It now needs to finish the job.
Ukraine issued the GDP warrants — bonds indexed to economic growth — to sweeten an earlier 2015 debt restructuring after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
But Kyiv made one crucial omission: unlike other warrant issuers, it did not cap future payouts, leaving it on the hook for big annual payments for each year its economy grows by 3% or more.
“This is the next task,” Yuriy Butsa, Ukraine’s veteran debt agency chief, said in a telephone interview referring to restructuring the warrants, adding that he hoped it would be done in a “relatively short timeframe”.
Ukraine made a $70.5-million warrant payment in August to coincide with the country’s main restructuring. But the next one — due on 31 May 2025 — is set to be in the hundreds of millions after GDP reached 5.3% last year in a bounce from a near 30% contraction caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Ukraine faces large winter power shortfall, says energy agency
Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall could reach six gigawatts this winter, about a third of expected peak demand, amid Russian attacks on energy infrastructure and the expiry of a gas supply contract, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s energy system has been targeted by Russian attacks, resulting in rolling blackouts and limited electricity supply to some regions for hours each day.
Russia stepped up attacks in March in what Kyiv said looked like a concerted effort to degrade the system before winter, when temperatures often fall below -10°C.
The European Union on Thursday offered to help, saying a fuel power plant was being dismantled in Lithuania to be rebuilt in Ukraine to restore 2.5GW of capacity. Electricity exports would also be increased, it said.
This summer, when electricity demand is usually lower than winter, Ukraine’s generation capacity fell by more than 2GW below peak demand of 12GW, said the IEA report. This winter, peak electricity demand could increase to 18.5GW, it said.
Even when the country’s nuclear plants return from maintenance outages and with electricity imports of 1.7GW from European neighbouring countries, Ukraine’s supply deficit could reach 6GW, the equivalent of peak annual demand in Denmark, said the report.
Ukraine’s energy ministry on Thursday said the country had lost 9GW of generating capacity this year as a result of more than 1,000 Russian strikes. Ukraine has also attacked energy infrastructure in Russia but on a smaller scale, mainly focusing on oil refineries. DM