Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will use "a range of responses" if the United States and its NATO allies allow Ukraine to use Western long-range weapons to strike inside Russia, according to remarks published on Sunday.
"[The Russian defense ministry] is thinking about how to respond to the possible long-range strikes on Russian territory, it will offer a range of responses," Putin told state TV reporter Pavel Zarubin in video remarks published on Zarubin's Telegram messaging account.
Meanwhile, Russia's air defense destroyed or intercepted 51 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian defense ministry said early Sunday.
Eighteen of the drones were intercepted over the Tambov region, about 450 kilometers southeast of Moscow, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. Another 16 were destroyed over the Belgorod border region and the rest over the Voronezh, Oryol and Kursk regions in Russia's south.
One woman was injured as a result of the drone attack on Belgorod, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram. He added that a few cars were also damaged.
The Russian defense ministry reports only how many drones its units destroy, not how many Ukraine launches. Russian officials also rarely disclose the full scale of damage inflicted by the attacks, especially when they involve military or energy infrastructure.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Russian forces have advanced further into several eastern Ukrainian towns, bringing them closer to capturing the strategic city of Pokrovsk, Russian and Ukrainian bloggers reported late Saturday.
"The enemy advanced in Selydove," DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that analyzes combat footage, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. It posted a map indicating Russian troops in the town's southeast.
FILE - A man walks past a building damaged by a Russian military strike in the town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sept. 17, 2024.
Russian forces have been storming the coal mining town of Selydove in Ukraine's Donetsk region for the past week. Capturing it would pave the way for a Russian advance on the logistical hub of Pokrovsk 20 km northwest.
Russian military bloggers also reported that Russian forces were close to taking over the town of Kurakhove, just southwest of Hirnyk.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. Ukraine has not commented on them.
Ukraine's Armed Forces said in its evening report on Saturday that Kyiv forces had repelled 36 Russian attacks along the Pokrovsk front-line in the previous day, including in the area of Selydove, while several battles were still ongoing.
After Moscow's full-scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 failed to seize the capital Kyiv and win a decisive victory, President Vladimir Putin scaled back his war ambitions to taking the old industrial heartland in Ukraine's east known as Donbas, which covers the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Last month Russian forces advanced there at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open-source data, despite Ukraine taking a part of Russia's Kursk region.