Russia’s wave of missile and drone strikes aimed at Kyiv and other major cities in Ukraine at the time of the morning rush hour marks a cynical response from the Kremlin to the bombing of the Kerch strait bridge to Crimea.
Its victims were overwhelmingly civilians, in what were the first strikes on the capital since the end of June, hitting buildings, streets, parks and children’s playgrounds. Power supplies in Lviv and Kharkiv were also affected in an attack that brought mass fear not seen since the first six weeks of the war.
Little, if any, of what was struck appears to have any direct military significance, and the cynical decision to target Kyiv and other urban centres was clearly political, despite what the Russian president said on Monday morning.
“A massive strike was carried out with long-range high-precision air, sea and land-based weapons on Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities,” the Russian president said chillingly.
But it should not be forgotten that the wilful or reckless targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure are, simply, war crimes that have left at least 11 dead.
Their goal is to strike fear into Ukraine’s leadership and its civilian population, in the hope Kyiv will eventually feel forced to negotiate while Russia still occupies a sixth or more of Ukraine’s land.
Ukraine was undeniably anxious on Monday and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will use the fact of the attacks to press for even tougher western sanctions and more missile defence systems at an online G7 meeting on Tuesday lunchtime, which it clearly badly needs.
But for all the chaos the attacks have brought, the question will be whether this assault on the cities will endure. Early in September, Kharkiv was targeted by a vicious wave of missile attacks after Ukraine’s battlefield success near the country’s second city, with power and water supplies temporarily knocked out.
However, the intensity of the attacks subsequently subsided, and they had no major impact on the battlefield, where Russia continues to lose ground in the northern sector of the front, losing the city of Lyman in the last few days.
It is not at all obvious that Russia can maintain an intensification of the missile strikes for an extended period, given how much ammunition it has used in the war so far, and how much internationally political condemnation such attacks will attract.
The military reality is also that Russian missile strikes will do nothing to change the balance of power on the ground in the fighting, and whatever fear they provoke, they will not affect Ukraine’s desire to resist, at least in the short term.
As it stands, Ukraine is also gaining ground on the way to Kherson in the south as well as in the northern Donbas. The Kremlin knows its current military position is weak, which is why Monday’s attack serves a second purpose, to try to quiet the hardline nationalists who are its principal critics.
No wonder, then, that Moscow appears to be trying to bring Belarus closer into the war, with the two countries promising to deploy a joint military taskforce. But Belarus’s army is small, only 11,700 strong plus 6,150 special forces (most of its forces are militia to repress internal dissent).
This may mean that the grisly events of Monday have less of a long-term significance than it might appear. But the problem is that, with Russian forces clearly losing ground, Putin’s decision-making is becoming more vicious.
Moscow knows it needs to escalate and has already tried recruiting prisoners and forced conscription, with no immediate results. Now it has resorted to a wave of mass urban bombing, and may well do so again.
