MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Friday that European countries were becoming more involved in the war in Ukraine, referencing a warning from Russia’s Defence Ministry about drone production sites across the continent and in Britain.

The Defence Ministry on Wednesday warned against European plans to step up drone supplies to Ukraine and published a list of factories and enterprises it alleged manufacture drones or drone components.

It listed facilities in Britain, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Israel and Turkiye.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said in a subsequent post on X that the list amounted to a list of potential targets for Russia’s armed forces. “When strikes become a reality depends on what comes next. Sleep well, European partners!” said Medvedev.

Asked whether the Defence Ministry’s publication and Medvedev’s comments meant that Russia was genuinely considering striking targets in Europe, Peskov did not give a yes or no answer.

“These countries are becoming increasingly directly involved in the conflict, in the war surrounding Ukraine,” said Peskov. “The details are set out in the Defence Ministry’s statement.”

Anti-drone defence

Russia announced on Friday it is bolstering air defences around critical infrastructure sites in the northwest after a spate of Ukrainian attacks on key oil exporting ports.

Ukraine has repeatedly attacked the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk — the two most important export hubs for oil in western Russia.

Kyiv says the strikes are fair retaliation for Moscow’s nightly barrages of its cities.

Ukraine is also seeking to reduce Russia’s earnings from the energy price surge amid the war in the Middle East.

Leningrad governor Alexander Drozdenko said he had “decided to deploy additional mobile fire groups at key enterprises in the region to protect them from UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) attacks.”

“Reservists are expected to be involved in the mobile fire units,” he said in a video.

Signing up would be voluntary and under an initial three-year contract, he added.

President Vladimir Putin last year signed a law to allow reservists to guard oil refineries, which have also been heavily targeted by Ukrainian drones.

These have weighed on Russian oil shipments, even as the International Energy Agency said this week that Russia’s oil export revenues almost doubled to $19 billion in March.

Oil loadings at Ust-Luga and Primorsk halved in the week following a Ukrainian drone raid on March 23.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2026