Zelenskyy Warns Airlines: Russian Airspace Now Unsafe

Putin used his news conference to promise a harder winter for Ukraine. "The Russian armed forces have been ordered to prepare and carry out mass strikes on Ukraine's energy facilities. They are striking us, and they will get a response," he said. "I'm not saying we'll collapse the economy there, but it's a serious challenge for them."

Asked whether Russia would strike British military facilities producing weapons for Ukraine, Putin said only: "That's a military secret." Moscow had earlier accused the UK of "escalation" and threatened "consequences" over reports that British-made drones were used in long-range strikes inside Russia.

Putin also claimed Russian forces had captured the town of Sviatohirsk in Donetsk. The claim was not supported by battlefield maps from the Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, and even pro-war Russian blogger Alexei Larkin disputed it: "This is simply a lie. Sviatohirsk has not been liberated. The level of the president's misinformation is critical."

Pressed on speculation about a second mobilization, Putin dismissed it as "nonsense."