"Wherever they attempt to strike Russian territory, we will respond in kind, but our strikes will be several times more powerful," Vladimir Putin told a meeting of pro-Kremlin activists on Monday [1]. The trigger was concrete: Ukraine's recent long-range drone and missile campaign against Russian refineries, tankers and terminals, which has caused widespread fuel shortages inside Russia.

Those tankers are the thread this desk has been pulling. When Ukrainian drones set two Russian oil tankers ablaze on July 10, the story was the visible damage; Putin's Monday vow is Moscow's answer to that damage, not a fresh operation. He named no target, no weapon and no date.

AP places the threat where it belongs: alongside a Paris summit the same day. Ten nations -- Ukraine, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom -- announced a coalition to build a shared ballistic-missile defense for Europe, part of a "Coalition of the Willing" drawing more than 30 countries and about 25 heads of state to the Hotel des Invalides [1]. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it "a coalition of the deluded... a coalition of warmongers" [1].

The vow circulates as a promised escalation. The day's actual metric was 134 long-range strike drones and three guided aviation missiles launched at Ukraine [1]. "Several times more powerful" is a claim awaiting a count.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow