Putin martyrizes the Ukrainians and blames Zelensky for it: “He has opened Pandora’s box”

Moscow“They have opened Pandora’s box,” Vladimir Putin warned recently, after a month of the Ukrainian campaign against Russian online retail warehouses. That threat seemed like a new step in the rhetorical escalation with which the Kremlin has been pressuring Volodymyr Zelenskyy for months, and which until now had not translated into the promised wave of systematic attacks. In recent weeks, however, this warning has become a reality. Russia has been relentless day and night against Kyiv and its region, causing dozens of deaths. Moscow is chest-thumping about having turned the Ukrainian capital into a city in permanent alert and has once again recommended that foreign diplomats flee. Furthermore, it has given the starting signal for the season of bombings against Ukrainian energy facilities with the drop in temperatures.

Since August 27, for eight days and eight nights, Russia was tormenting Kyiv and its surroundings, and only eased off during the visit of Donald Trump’s emissaries. If the residents of the Ukrainian capital were used to taking shelter in bunkers and the subway mostly at night, periodically but not daily, this end of summer the situation has changed. The sirens have been sounding almost without interruption, and this has forced citizens to put their routine on pause and have to decide whether to remain trapped underground or ignore the alarm, despite the risk it entails. Even the Ukrainian Parliament has tested a digital voting system from its underground shelter.

The new Russian jet-powered drones, faster, harder to detect, and sent in small swarms every few minutes, have paralyzed for days a metropolis where millions of people live, making them feel even more the exhaustion of this phase of the war that especially punishes cities. The air raid signals had never been active for so long. In a highly unusual post, the official Russian agency TASS wanted to capitalize on this and highlight the magnitude of the air alert regime in Kyiv. According to their calculations, between August 29 and 30, the capital was under alarm for more than 19 hours, and between August 30 and 31, the sirens sounded 21 times. The result, in just over a week: more than eighty deaths.Warehouses and electrical installations

One of the Kremlin's main targets has been Ukrainian civilian warehouses, especially those of supermarkets, e-commerce platforms, or Nova Poshta, the country's main courier company. Although Putin presents this as a reaction to the Ukrainian attacks that have been setting fire to Wildberries and Ozon company facilities in Russia since mid-July, Moscow has been hitting civilian sites for a long time. However, from a monthly average of between five and ten impacts on these facilities, this August the number has risen to almost a hundred.

A direct consequence for Ukrainians is damage to distribution chains and empty shelves in shops. The head of the Finance Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Danylo Hetmantsev, lamented a few days ago that the situation was "extremely difficult" and that he had "never seen businesses so desperate." Nevertheless, Ukraine's Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, Taras Vysotskyi, asked people not to panic. While he admits that nearly 90% of grocery retailers' warehouses have been damaged, he assures that there will be no food shortages. In other words, this is not a food crisis, but a logistics crisis.

Added to these difficulties is the start of a new campaign of massive attacks against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Just like in 2025, the Russian military leadership has waited for the arrival of autumn, which in Russia begins on September 1st, to warn of the intention to leave the residents of Ukraine's major cities without heating and to launch the first major bombardments. Last week it already attacked the electricity grid of Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea, and caused 350,000 households to be left without power.Zelensky, the person responsible

Putin blames Zelensky, who denounces that he has crossed a red line by hitting his refineries. “We were operating under the assumption that these were strictly civilian targets that could not be the object of any kind of attack, but we were wrong,” the Russian president pointed out. “We have been forced to respond symmetrically so that it does not come free for them to cause us harm.” The Ministry of Defense even shared a message on Telegram that read: “In winter, you will freeze.” It was accompanied by a photo of several Shahed drones flying over a cloudy sky and the motto “Like snow on the head.” The Ukrainian army retaliated with a post of a burning oil depot and the text “We will warm ourselves with the fire of the Russian refineries.”

The temporary disadvantage in the drone race and the structural lack of ballistic missile interceptors put Zelensky in a very complicated situation heading into winter. Putin feels strong and uses any Ukrainian attack or move –the latest, the desire to make Russian airspace collapse– as a justification for an escalation that becomes more lethal with each passing day. In turn, the Russian president rejects peace talks: he attributes to Kyiv the full responsibility for this spiral of destruction and intimidation, and argues, therefore, that it is impossible to negotiate with terrorists.