Russian President Vladimir Putin used a press conference following the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek to deliver a broad assessment of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s confrontation with the West.
He described Russian forces as gaining momentum across several parts of the front, warned that attacks on Russian infrastructure would bring a larger response and said foreign military installations inside Ukraine would be considered legitimate targets. On the question of whether Moscow’s retaliatory reach could extend to military-industrial sites in Britain, Putin declined to set a public boundary.
Putin said Russian forces were not only continuing their advance but increasing its pace. He pointed to movement towards Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkovka, while claiming that roughly 5,000 Ukrainian troops had been surrounded near the Krasnooskolskoye Reservoir.
He also reported advances in Zaporozhye Region and towards Sumy, although he cautioned against predicting when a decisive military shift might occur. War, he said, remained too unpredictable for firm timelines, even as he expressed confidence that “the enemy will crumble.”
The Russian president rejected proposals to freeze the conflict along the present line of contact. Moscow, he said, was seeking an end to the war and a lasting settlement rather than an arrangement that would merely postpone further fighting.
Putin sharply criticised recent remarks by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky concerning civilian airlines operating in Russian airspace. He described the statements as a bid for “state terrorism” and said they were difficult to reconcile with Kiev’s calls for negotiations and direct meetings.
Should threats against civilian aircraft turn into actual attacks, Putin said Russia would find the means to respond. He added that Moscow had so far avoided directly targeting Ukraine’s senior political and military leadership because Russia could eventually require negotiating partners on the Ukrainian side.
The Russian military has also been instructed to prepare large-scale strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities, Putin said. He presented the order as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, fuel installations and oil refineries.
According to Putin, Ukrainian drones had again attempted to reach targets around Moscow, St Petersburg and several refineries, but were intercepted. His summary of Russia’s position was blunt: “They hit ours — they’ll get an answer.”
He also defended a decree allowing temporary state management of critical infrastructure considered inadequately protected. Putin said the measure was intended to compel closer cooperation between private companies and state agencies on drone defence, rather than to transfer the assets permanently into state ownership.
Turning to the Black Sea, Putin said Russia had not attacked commercial shipping indiscriminately. He maintained that Russian forces had carried out selective strikes against vessels transporting weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, arguing that secondary explosions had revealed the nature of their cargoes.
Putin linked the expanded maritime campaign to what he described as Kiev’s effort to damage Russia’s economy and logistics. He claimed Ukrainian operations had struck around 100 vessels and killed several sailors, including foreign nationals, without causing critical damage to Russia.
In his account, Ukraine had “opened Pandora’s box” by widening the conflict at sea and should now expect a Russian response. He also repeated Moscow’s criticism of the former Black Sea grain arrangement, saying that only a small share of Ukrainian exports had reached the poorer countries initially cited as the deal’s intended beneficiaries.
Putin was equally direct when asked about possible British military facilities in Ukraine. Any such installation, he said, would be treated like any other military target on Ukrainian territory.
He was less explicit about whether British defence factories inside the United Kingdom could become targets if British-supplied weapons were used against Russia. Asked to define Moscow’s red lines, Putin answered only that this was a “military secret.”
The Russian leader also rejected German accusations concerning a reported drone incident in Leipzig. He argued that Berlin was using the idea of an aggressive Russia to divert attention from its own political and economic difficulties.
Putin returned to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, dismissing earlier suggestions that Russia might have sabotaged infrastructure built to deliver its own gas to Europe. Russia remained capable of supplying Germany, he said, but Berlin lacked the political will to resume the flow under pressure from Washington.
His broader description of the West was characteristically combative. Rather than comparing Western powers to orcas, which he called intelligent animals, Putin revived the Soviet-era phrase “sharks of imperialism” and warned that Russia was prepared to resist any attempt to weaken or consume it.
Despite the confrontational language, Putin said communication between Russian and American intelligence services remained normal and necessary. Such contacts, he noted, had continued even during the Cold War and should not automatically be treated as unusual.
He spoke positively about Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, describing the two Trump confidants as sincere interlocutors who retained the US president’s trust. Both men, Putin said, remained welcome in Moscow.
Russia would also accept the involvement of additional parties in negotiations if they were capable of making a practical contribution. What Moscow would not support, he added, was diplomacy conducted for appearances or without a realistic prospect of changing the situation.
Taken together, Putin’s remarks combined battlefield confidence with carefully maintained uncertainty. Moscow made clear that it considered military infrastructure, energy systems, shipping routes and foreign facilities connected to Ukraine’s war effort part of the widening confrontation. At the same time, Putin avoided defining exactly how far Russia was prepared to go, leaving both Kiev and its Western partners to calculate where the Kremlin’s actual limits might lie.