Russia cuts off in the most official manner any threat scenario against Kaliningrad, with its embassy in London speaking openly of a nuclear strike against Britain should officials of that country dare to «fire even a single bullet» at the Russian Baltic exclave, as reported by Lenta on September 29.
«Any military action by the United Kingdom or NATO against Russian territory will be met with all means at the disposal of Russia, including nuclear weapons», the Russian embassy in London emphasized pointedly.
The message from Russia is, therefore, transparent and... nuclear.
However, Moscow sent yet another message to the British in the early morning hours of September 29, this time on the battlefield.
British missiles in Kyiv burned down with unprecedented fury...
«For whatever follows, London will be responsible», Russian officials now convey.
«We will drop nuclear weapons in the heart of Great Britain»
Any military action by the United Kingdom or NATO will be met with all available means by Russia, the Russian Embassy in London warned on its social media page on X.
«Any military action by the United Kingdom or NATO against Russian territory will be met with all means at the disposal of Russia, including nuclear weapons», the statement reads.
The diplomatic mission noted that those who advocate a blockade or an attack on Kaliningrad should not deceive themselves regarding the consequences.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Western countries sought to defeat Russia in the military conflict but failed, while their attempts to destabilize the situation from within also failed.
He claimed that the West was exerting brutal pressure on Moscow.
The Russians turned British FP-5 in Kyiv to ashes
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense of Russia announced on September 29 that Russian forces struck a train depot in Kyiv overnight.
According to the ministry, a warehouse for British-made FP-5 Flamingo surface-to-surface cruise missiles, as well as their components, was located there.
The ministry named the depot as one of the targets of a combined attack on Ukraine.
In the same statement, it claimed that two data processing centers in Kyiv, Bimobile and Parkovy, were hit.
Information regarding the placement of the missiles in the depot and the results of the strike was provided by the Russian side.
Western data centers in Kyiv targeted with fury
At the same time, the municipal administration of Kyiv reported that on the night of September 29, debris from missiles and drones fell in several districts of the Ukrainian capital, causing fires and damage to buildings and vehicles. However, the municipal administration of Kyiv, as is customary, omits the targets cited by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
It is clear, nonetheless, that an isolated strike by an attack UAV or missile does not guarantee the complete destruction of a given target.
Despite repeated attacks, Ukrainian data centers remain operational to a degree.
They are not easily deactivated due to the large number of servers they contain, while the digital infrastructure is generally decentralized.
However, if these attacks are approached systematically, Kyiv will sooner or later inevitably lose this infrastructure, a fact that will have a corresponding impact on the entire Ukrainian economy.
Everything changed in 10 days for Russia: From negotiations... to intensification of strikes
Meanwhile in mid-September, the Kremlin hinted that negotiations over Ukraine could resume.
Putin stated that trilateral talks with the USA and Ukraine were doubtful to take place before the State Duma elections, but that Russia would be ready to resume contacts thereafter.
The elections concluded on September 20.
Within the span of a week, both Putin and Lavrov shifted from a conditionally open posture to stances that make achieving a peaceful resolution of the war more difficult than at any other time this year.
The turning point was election day...
The turning point came with the drone campaign of Ukraine on election day.
Putin claimed that more than 1,600 drones had penetrated the Moscow region that night and struck polling stations, including one in a school, which, as he stated, was almost entirely destroyed.
The chairwoman of the territorial electoral commission lost her life when drones struck her home.
Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin characterized the raid as unprecedented.
Two civilians were killed and an oil refinery sustained damage in the region of the Russian capital.
Regardless of how Russian reports regarding the extent of the damage are interpreted, the political impact in Moscow was clear.
The statement by Putin that upended everything
In the press conference he held in Saint Petersburg on September 25, Putin completely overturned the planned course of negotiations.
He enumerated a series of escalations on the part of Ukraine: the attack on the port of Saint Petersburg during the economic forum in June, the campaign against Russian oil refineries, the attempt to blockade Russian shores in the Black Sea, which, according to him, caused damage to more than 100 vessels, as well as attacks on commercial warehouses.
He stated that Russia responded to each of these attacks so effectively that Kyiv now seeks a partial truce in the energy sector and in the air.
Putin did not view these requests as a pretext for negotiations.
He considered them proof that Russian pressure is delivering results.
«Proposals on the table... missiles in the skies»
His message to Kyiv was that no provocation or escalation will yield the desired outcome and will merely worsen its position.
Then came the key phrase.
Proposals, as he said, remain on the table, but after everything Ukraine did, Russia will «think twice» about how it will respond.
Any decision, including the resumption of negotiations, will be based on the interests of Russia.
This represents a noticeable shift compared to the situation ten days earlier.
Putin did not shut the door on negotiations, but he removed the implied commitment to resume them after the elections and made any resumption contingent upon its own assessment of what it could gain from them.
Lavrov pointed out the responsibilities of the Europeans...
In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made his position clear in New York on September 23.
Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, he stated: «Having learned from bitter experience, we will not suspend the special military operation during negotiations under any circumstances».
He stated that European countries wanted a pause to buy time in order to replenish the depleted arsenals of Ukraine.
He characterized a preliminary truce as frivolous and insisted that the objective is a long-term settlement.
The head of Russian diplomacy went beyond the mechanisms of a ceasefire.
He claimed that Ukraine would have retained its 1991 borders had the Europeans not «interfered in their machinations».
This portrays the loss of Ukrainian territories as irreversible and casts the blame upon Europe.
This is not the language of a government preparing for negotiations along the contact line.
«There are no negotiations with European mediation...»
In his speech to the General Assembly on September 26, Lavrov made Europe the primary threat.
He stated that the EU is militarizing for war with Russia, and that a military buildup of such scale could ultimately lead to conflict.
He implied that the pursuit of military supremacy by Germany could be regarded as an attempt to create a «Fourth Reich» and described European war preparations as a potential «self-fulfilling prophecy».
As a result, Europe ceased to be part of the negotiations.
Lavrov told the Europeans that they are preparing for war, that their appeals for a ceasefire are a tool for the rearmament of Ukraine, and that they destroyed the possibility of resolving the situation regarding the 1991 borders of Ukraine.
Moscow now considers only the United States as a legitimate mediator.
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