EDITORIAL: Peskov names the “price” Ukraine will pay. Arm its sky before Putin’s spring

Monday’s price

A press briefing in Moscow

On September 28, speaking in Moscow, Dmitry Peskov warned that Ukraine would have to “pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months.”

The Kremlin spokesman recalled that Vladimir Putin had already said as much. Russian forces, he added according to Anadolu, keep striking the targets they consider appropriate.

The price. That is the word this piece is about. An accountant’s word, in a spokesman’s mouth.

He did not say what price. He did not say until when. It is happening right now, he added, according to the Associated Press.

Paid the same day

That same Monday, in broad daylight, Russian drones struck central Kyiv and central Dnipro, Reuters reports.

The price announced on Monday was already being paid on Monday.

A price is paid in things you can touch. A window giving way under your hand. A roof. An apartment-building door you push open at a run.

A price is paid in nights, too. In hours of alerts nobody dares to count anymore.

We refuse to read this word as a figure of speech. It is a program.

A program has stages. It has targets. It has a deadline.

The Kremlin says price. Ukraine says Monday.

Putin’s warning on the 25th

“They are the ones who started it”

Three days earlier, on September 25, Putin spoke to Russian journalists, Reuters reports.

Moscow had been ready to resume negotiations after the parliamentary elections, he said. But Ukraine had struck Moscow and hit polling stations, he claimed.

“They are the ones who started it,” he said.

So they had to be “made to feel Russia’s retaliatory strikes.” Yet every settlement proposal remained “on the table,” he insisted the same day.

After everything they have done, he added, Moscow would have to think about its response. In his account, it is these strikes that push Kyiv to call for a ceasefire.

A threat. A table. A response to be weighed.

The word price was already in circulation. Ukraine would have to pay the price of a sustained response, Putin said, according to Reuters. Peskov merely repeated it.

On the table, under the drones

On the table, the proposals. Under the drones, the cities.

We do not read these two sentences separately. They form a single method: talk peace at the microphone, send the bill by air.

On the 25th, a threat. On the 28th, a confirmation.

In between, Peskov withdrew nothing. He clarified.

A table for the cameras, drones for the cities.

A theory built on winter

Capitulation before spring

On September 27, the Institute for the Study of War published its reading of this method. In its assessment, Putin is now betting on a combined strike campaign, ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, to force Ukraine to capitulate during the winter of 2026–2027.

The ISW judges that Putin is not planning an endless campaign. By its reading, he wants that capitulation before spring 2027.

A pro-Kremlin military blogger concedes that the front is static, the ISW notes. He urges Moscow to strike harder and faster while resources are plentiful.

Why the shift? Because Russian ground gains have been close to zero for months, according to the institute. Putin is reportedly revising his theory because of Ukraine’s successes in 2026.

The ISW adds that Putin will probably not negotiate seriously until this theory has run its course.

The same blogger warns that the cost of this campaign could, over time, outweigh its immediate effects. He also judges that expanding the strike arsenal costs less than a second mobilization, the institute reports.

A timetable, not a temper

That is what “price” means. Not anger. A timetable.

We stand with the Ukrainians who will spend this winter under jet-powered drones. We stand against the campaign the Kremlin calls a “price.” Because Peskov announced it on September 28, and the ISW describes it as a strategy to force a capitulation before spring 2027.

Our adversary is not the Russian people. It is a timetable signed in Moscow.

Winter as a weapon, spring as the deadline.

Faster drones

Since late April

The campaign rests on a specific tool, the ISW writes: cheap, jet-powered Geran-type drones, launched en masse, that pierce defences.

Russian forces began stepping up their use in late April 2026, according to the institute.

On September 26, Zelensky said Ukraine now intercepts 55% of these drones: more than 1,500 of the 2,730 launched in September, according to the ISW.

Interceptors in testing

Ukraine is testing interceptor drones in combat conditions, Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President, said on September 27, as cited by the ISW. Their mass use could begin within a few months.

It is not yet clear, the institute writes, whether that program will grow fast enough to disrupt the Russian campaign this winter.

These drones exceed 400 to 450 km/h, RBC-Ukraine notes. Most interceptors can’t keep up.

Some even cut their engines and glide before impact, warns a presidential adviser cited by the ISW. Nobody yet knows whether it is a tactic or a malfunction.

A few months. One winter. That is the race.

Fifty-five out of a hundred. The rest come down somewhere.

Will the interceptors be ready for the first hard frost?

And yet the sky over millions of people rests on that bet.

Forty-five drones in a hundred still get through.

Moscow, September 20

The strike on Kapotnya

Moscow’s argument deserves to be stated in its toughest form.

On September 20, a wave of Ukrainian drones hit Moscow and the surrounding region, the Kyiv Post reports. The Kapotnya refinery caught fire. It supplies about 40% of the capital’s fuel.

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin spoke of the largest drone attack ever launched on the capital. He said more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted, about 450 of them on the approaches to Moscow. The regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, counted at least two dead and six injured.

The refinery processes about 11 million tonnes of crude a year, according to the Kyiv Post. A heavy target. A real one.

Peskov adds that Moscow must prevent a “crushing strike” announced in Kyiv.

There is the retaliation, the Kremlin would argue. Kyiv started it. Kyiv pays.

April before September

Here is what turns the argument around. The surge in Russian jet-powered drones dates from late April, according to the ISW. Nearly five months before Kapotnya.

April. May. June. July. August. Then Kapotnya.

Retaliation follows an attack. This came before it.

And the theory the ISW describes does not target a refinery. It targets a capitulation.

What does retaliation look like when it starts five months early?

Five months ahead is not retaliation.

Kyiv strikes too

Rostov, Yaroslavl, Moscow

What follows does not suit us. We write it anyway.

Kyiv strikes Russia, and strikes hard. On September 17, Ukrainian drones hit the Rostov military airfield and the Yaroslavl refinery, according to the Kyiv Post. On the 20th, Moscow.

People died in the Moscow region, at least two, according to its governor.

The campaign goes on. The Perm and Novoshakhtinsk refineries stopped operating after Ukrainian strikes on September 25 and 26, according to a Ukrainian official cited by the ISW. A military optics plant in Azov was hit.

These are heavy blows. We do not hide them.

The interceptor bet

Another awkward fact. Our defence rests on a bet. The ISW does not know whether Ukraine’s interceptors will arrive in time.

True. And it doesn’t change this: the Russian theory, according to the ISW, bets that Ukraine’s energy and critical infrastructure will not hold through the winter.

Kyiv targets refineries and arms plants. Kyiv targets tanks that fuel an army. Moscow targets the endurance of an entire country.

A refinery shut down deprives an army of fuel. A boiler house struck deprives a family of heat.

A war on fuel tanks is not a war on boiler houses.

Kyiv aims at fuel tanks, Moscow at a winter.

Arms control, by yesterday

What Peskov wants from Washington

That same Monday, Peskov spoke of something else. Arms control talks with the United States need to resume “yesterday,” he said, according to Anadolu.

The treaty framework is “completely bare,” he added. It will take “long and painstaking expert negotiations.”

And China? Beijing does not consider its participation either necessary or possible, Peskov recalled, since its nuclear arsenal is not comparable to those of Russia and the United States.

Two languages, one day

To Washington, a table. To Kyiv, a bill.

We see the method. With the strong, treaties. With Ukraine, a price.

And yet the same spokesman acknowledges that Beijing, the leading threat of our time, stays far from any nuclear table.

So the Kremlin knows how to negotiate. It chooses with whom.

We do not reject arms control. We reject the double bookkeeping. A treaty on one side. A price on the other.

The Kremlin wants time with Washington. It leaves Kyiv none.

Treaties for the strong, a price for Ukraine.

The price has names

Monday, in Kyiv and Synelnykove

On Monday, the price was not abstract.

In Kyiv, Nataliia Bukalo, an assistant at the National Academy of Sciences, died during her lunch break, according to Ukrainska Pravda and Suspilne.

In Synelnykove, three people died at a logistics branch, two of them teenagers, according to ZN.ua.

One name. Two teenagers. One Monday.

We name them because the spokesman did not.

What the bill leaves out

A bill carries no names. A bill carries only a total.

Peskov gave no total. He gave a word.

A name is spoken quietly. A Kremlin word gets repeated across every newsfeed.

We admit it: after a while, you get used to reading these lines. That habit is exactly what the Russian campaign is buying.

Dead with names, a price with no total.

2,200 drones in a week

A week of numbers

Over the previous week, Zelensky counted more than 2,200 attack drones, 1,650 glide bombs and 38 missiles, most of them ballistic, according to the ISW.

On the night of September 26 to 27, 170 drones, 76 of them jet-powered, according to Ukraine’s Air Force cited by the ISW. 147 shot down.

Impacts on logistics, civilian, energy and medical infrastructure, in eight regions.

Twenty-two hundred. Sixteen hundred and fifty. Thirty-eight. A belligerent’s figures, which we report as such.

Eight regions. A single night.

Every night, a tally. Every morning, a list of places hit.

Kherson, at human height

In Kherson, the ISW describes Russian forces deliberately targeting civilians with drones. A woman and two other civilians were hit, according to geolocated footage published on September 26 and 27.

A Ukrainian drone maker, Pegasus ARMS, had to suspend production after ballistic strikes, the institute reports.

In other words, the price is also paid in workshops.

Every number this week has a place.

Twenty-seven billion for the sky

What Kyiv asks of Europe

That same Monday, Ukraine’s defence minister, Yevhen Khmara, addressed the European Union’s defence ministers.

He asked them to fund interceptors against jet-powered drones, so they arrive quickly and in numbers, according to his ministry. He is also asking for Patriot missiles drawn from European stocks, to be swapped for deliveries scheduled later.

Nearly a third of Ukraine’s additional defence need of US$27 billion is an advance payment for drones delivered in early 2027, the ministry specifies.

The money has to arrive this fall, so manufacturers have time to buy components, according to RBC-Ukraine.

Kyiv is not asking for everything. Soldiers’ pay and benefits, US$7 billion, will be covered from its own resources, the ministry writes. The government is cutting every expense not related to defence.

The minister also thanked the Union for a €3 billion disbursement under its loan. Kyiv pays its share. Kyiv asks for the rest on time.

Deploy now

Kaja Kallas asked EU countries the same day to draw on their stocks of interceptor missiles, Mezha reports. Everyone needs them, she said, and stocks are not sufficient.

They should be “deployed now and replenished later.”

We demand that our governments fund the interceptors before winter. We demand that stocks of interceptor missiles be used now. Funds planned for 2027 must arrive in 2026, as Kyiv asks. The word price must be read for what it is: a timetable. And that timetable must meet a budget.

Pay in the fall so we don’t pay in the spring.

Three times fewer missiles

What Kyiv receives

Zelensky says Ukraine has received three times fewer anti-ballistic missiles this year than last, Mezha reports. Partners cite the war in the Middle East.

According to the Financial Times, cited by Mezha, Donald Trump refused to transfer 300 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, to preserve American stocks during the war against Iran.

If that refusal is confirmed, it is a bad move. It leaves Ukraine more alone against ballistic missiles just as Moscow bets on winter.

In August, partners delivered a small batch of Patriot missiles, Zelensky said, according to the same outlet. Crotale systems arrived. Missiles for NASAMS too.

A small batch. Not a shield.

We judge Trump act by act. This one, if confirmed, weakens Ukraine at the worst moment.

The good move still open to Trump

Trump can still do better. Zelensky announced on September 25 that Trump had granted Kyiv the right to produce its own Patriot missiles, according to the Kyiv Independent.

A licence, if it materializes, is a good move. Missiles delivered this fall would be another.

One good move. One bad move, if confirmed. A winter that waits for neither.

A licence for tomorrow, a hole in the sky today.

Our share of the price

A budget against a timetable

The Kremlin has a timetable. Spring 2027, according to the ISW. We must set a budget against it.

Every interceptor delivered this fall takes a line off the winter’s bill. Every interceptor delivered in March arrives after the season that counts.

And yet our capitals are still debating the loan schedule. Kyiv is asking to bring forward to 2026 funds planned for 2027.

A year’s gap on a loan schedule. A winter’s gap on a war timetable.

A budget gets voted. A timetable gets endured. We choose the vote.

Pay now or later

We admit to a weariness. Every fall, the same requests. Every winter, a strike campaign that intensifies, as the ISW points out.

The cold of an unheated apartment is felt first in the hands. Then the feet. Then you stop feeling it and simply endure it.

That weariness, ours, would be the Russian timetable’s best ally.

And if winter arrives before the interceptors…

A Russian timetable, a Western budget.

Arm the sky before spring

What Peskov said

Peskov spoke of a price. He is right on one point: someone will pay.

Ukrainians are already paying, on Mondays like September 28. They pay in nights of alerts. They pay in shuttered workshops. They pay in names.

That leaves defence. It has a cost too, and a deadline.

The Kremlin has set its own. Kyiv has costed its own. Ours is missing.

The sky over Kyiv

On what day will our governments decide that Kyiv’s sky, this winter, is also defended with our budget?

The ISW has already given a date.

Spring.

A price announced on Monday, a sky to arm before spring.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Anadolu — Peskov says Ukraine will “pay a price,” and arms control, September 28, 2026
• Reuters — Putin wants Ukraine to feel retaliatory strikes, September 25, 2026
• Ukrainian Ministry of Defence — Khmara asks the EU to fund interceptors, September 28, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Institute for the Study of War — Putin’s theory of victory and a capitulation sought before spring 2027, September 27, 2026
• Kyiv Post — largest drone strike on Moscow hits the Kapotnya refinery, September 20, 2026
• Mezha — Kaja Kallas asks EU states to hand over interceptor missiles, September 28, 2026