Russia’s latest brutal wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine is a dangerous – and cruel – escalation of the war.
It is also an act of desperation by Russian President Vladimir Putin whose forces have suffered a number of humiliating setbacks on the ground.
The Ukrainian capital Kyiv, as well as other cities such as Lviv in the west, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv in the south, Avdiivka in the east and the central-eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, were all attacked with no regard whatsoever for civilian casualties.
Indeed, it is clear that civilians have, once again, been deliberately targeted by the Russian military in what has become a pattern of heinous war crimes committed by Moscow.
Energy facilities in Ukraine have been purposely hit, causing widespread power blackouts and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without light, water and heat in cities across the country.
It is clear that Putin’s strategy is to make life as unbearable as possible for Ukrainians and to break their incredible resolve in resisting the Russian onslaught. However, he is mistaken if he thinks these latest acts of savagery will force Ukraine to capitulate or agree to give up chunks of its territory illegally annexed by Moscow.
On the contrary, the more Russia persists in these barbaric acts, the more Ukrainians will continue to resist this ill-advised invasion of their country.
Putin’s latest acts of barbarism are also an attempt to satisfy his military’s critics at home, who have long urged him to retaliate after a string of battleground losses in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s missile attacks came after the Crimean Bridge, a pet project of the Russian president, was rocked by an explosion at the weekend, in a humiliating setback for Putin.
In reality, these military strikes show that Moscow is frantic because it knows it cannot win the battle on the ground. Its army has shown itself to be poorly led, poorly trained and equipped, ill-disciplined, unprofessional and demotivated. It is no match for the motivated and professional NATO-trained Ukrainian military.
Diplomatically, Russia is also isolated, as Wednesday’s overwhelming vote by the UN General Assembly to condemn Moscow’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions shows.
However, this state of affairs should not lead anyone to conclude that Russia cannot continue harming Ukraine. As we have seen, Moscow is still very capable of inflicting terrible damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure and of killing thousands of civilians through its cowardly missile attacks.
And, of course, Putin has hinted many times that Russia could even resort to using tactical nuclear weapons in this war, which would be a complete game changer in the conflict. The international community, in particular NATO and the EU, must therefore have a plan in the pipeline on how it would react in the event of such an attack.
There is no doubt that Russia significantly miscalculated its ability to defeat and occupy Ukraine, just as it underestimated the support of the West for Kyiv. The situation now is particularly dangerous because Putin has few options left and might resort to even more desperate measures to claim some sort of ‘victory’ in Ukraine.
Russia can never win this war but it will never allow itself to be defeated by Ukraine, irrespective of how much support Kyiv gets.
The decision by a number of NATO countries to provide Ukraine with advanced air defence systems is the right thing to do but more of a diplomatic effort needs to be made to get both sides to agree to a viable ceasefire and start negotiations with no pre-conditions.
Too much is at stake to let this conflict carry on indefinitely.