Putin threatens harsh revenge after drone hits Odesa train
The Russian president threatens harsher retaliation after a drone hit a passenger train near Odesa, a day after a weekend of heavy strikes killed at least 17 people in Ukraine and Russia.
Vladimir Putin has accused Kyiv of bringing on itself a retaliation he says will be far more devastating than anything Russia has launched so far, a day after a Russian drone hit a passenger train carrying 593 people near Odesa. For Serbia, balancing its European path against historic ties to Moscow, every fresh escalation in the Russia-Ukraine war sharpens the pressure to take a clearer foreign policy stance, while Brussels keeps alignment with Moscow on the list of open questions in the country’s membership talks.
What happened to the train near Odesa?
A jet-powered attack drone struck the locomotive of passenger train number 147, traveling from Zhytomyr to Odesa, on Sunday, August 23, according to Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the head of Ukrainian Railways. The train was carrying 593 passengers at the time, including 15 children. Staff spotted the danger in time and stopped the train, so the evacuation left no one hurt among either passengers or crew. Ukrainian Railways announced alternative transport to get passengers on to Odesa, while the same night’s Russian strikes also targeted rail infrastructure in Kyiv itself, killing one person and injuring another, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A bloody weekend along the front line
The strike on the Odesa train came a day after both sides traded heavy air attacks that, according to official figures from each, killed at least 17 people. Russian strikes on Ukraine on Saturday killed at least seven people, while Ukrainian strikes on Russia and Russian-controlled territory killed at least ten. Regional officials reported casualties from several areas throughout the day:
- Krasnodar region, three killed, including two children
- Belgorod, two killed and 13 injured
- Sevastopol in Crimea, at least two killed and ten injured after a strike on a bus
- Luhansk, two civilians killed, including a sixteen-year-old
- Kyiv region, two people killed
- Zaporizhzhia region, one person killed overnight, and three killed with 15 injured in a daytime strike
The death toll from Friday’s strike on the Sunny Gallery shopping mall in Kryvyi Rih, which Portal srpske.rs has already covered, has since risen to 16 dead and more than 130 injured, including 22 children, according to Dnipropetrovsk region governor Oleksandr Ganzha. Rescue crews were still searching the ruins of the building in Zelensky’s home city as of Saturday.
Putin: “Retaliation will not take long to arrive”
The Russian president told state broadcaster Vesti that Kyiv was the first to start damaging the Russian economy through a series of drone strikes on oil terminals, refineries and logistics hubs.
“The Kyiv regime has set out to inflict damage on our economy. It opened that Pandora’s box itself,” Putin said, adding that a response was coming: “Retaliation will not take long to arrive. Russia’s actions are far more painful and far more devastating.”
Over the weekend, Ukrainian drones hit a refinery in Novokuibyshevsk in the Samara region, sparking a fire, as well as a logistics center belonging to retailer Ozon in Chapaevsk, from which more than 500 employees were evacuated because of a fire. Overnight before August 23, Ukrainian forces also struck Ozon’s center in Orenburg, and a day earlier, on August 22, hit fuel tanks at an oil terminal in Yeysk in the Krasnodar region that supplies the Russian military. Putin also addressed Western partners’ peace proposals in the same remarks, dismissing them as unserious: “Sometimes, I would say, of an exotic nature.”
Brussels, Berlin and pressure on the region
The strikes triggered a fresh wave of support for Kyiv from European capitals. French President Emmanuel Macron announced accelerated delivery of military equipment and licensed missile production for Ukraine, along with the SAMP/T-NG air defense system, whose delivery had previously been announced only for spring 2027.
“Russia continues and intensifies the crime of its aggression,” Macron wrote on X, adding that he would speak with Zelensky on Monday, including about preparations for a meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who was in Kyiv on Saturday, sharply condemned the strike on the shopping mall and announced an additional 58 million dollars in humanitarian aid for United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations working along the front line, plus around 12 million dollars for a NATO fund supporting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter.
For Belgrade, the message from Moscow matters on two fronts. Serbia remains the only country in the region that has not imposed sanctions on Russia, a point Brussels regularly raises in the country’s European Union accession talks, even as Serbia depends on Russian gas. Any announcement of a wider Russian strike on Ukraine’s economy also raises the question of energy security for the entire region ahead of winter, a topic both French and German officials also raised with Zelensky over the weekend.
Whether Monday’s meeting of the Coalition of the Willing produces concrete mechanisms for defense against drones and missiles, or stays at the level of announcements like those that followed the Kryvyi Rih strike, will become clear in the coming days.
