When the Kremlin fires a $5 million cruise missile into a shopping mall, you can only wonder what the pay off is here? Typically, a military would save their most expensive munitions for the combatants' military targets. However, the intent appears to be to stoke enough fear in the Ukrainian population so that the government is willing to make territorial concessions. This is Mikhailo Podoliak's take on the latest civilian bombing, which of course the Kremlin has denied.
Having made few territorial gains after its initial onslaught, the Kremlin is now taking pot shots at civilian targets all over the country, as far away as Lviv, in an effort to create chaos and stoke fear. The only problem with this strategy is that Ukrainians have become inured to the attacks, having had to endure them for over four months now. Podoliak says the strategy isn't working as Ukrainians are not willing to concede these territorial losses.
Russia has a wide variety of short, middle and long range missiles and can fire on Ukrainian targets from as far away as the Caspian Sea. This is because the Russian air force is afraid to fly into Ukrainian air space, as its combatants have a very effective short range air defense system. Russian special forces were never able to take out Ukraine's air force, and Ukraine has a wide variety of short range rocket launchers to take out Russian aircraft and short range missiles. The only problem is that it is difficult to anticipate the longer range missiles, especially when Russia uses decoy missiles and the occasional hypersonic missile, which is tremendously costly. This strategy all but insures a long war, as Russia's only serious engagement is in the Donbas region, where it continues to make advancements.
Of course, one could argue this war has been going on since 2014, only then the Kremlin denied direct involvement, claiming it was an internal rebellion. In July of that year, a Malaysian passenger plane was shot down by a Buk 9M83 surface to air missile launched from the rebel held territory of Donetsk. A missile that could only have been fired by Russian forces, as it is doubtful they would have supplied such advanced technology to the rebels. Here again, the Kremlin denied the claim despite all the evidence that supported this assertion.
The interesting part to me is what the Kremlin gains by denying all these assertions? If the Kremlin honestly wanted to pursue peace, some element of culpability would go a long way. Instead, Putin's spokespersons continue to deny they are bombing Ukrainian civilian targets, despite having left a trail of destruction and carnage throughout the country. This level of cynicism is why there is really no point negotiating with the Kremlin. If it won't accept responsibility for its actions, is there any way to believe a meaningful peace agreement could be forged between Russia and Ukraine?
This seems to be the position NATO has now taken, ready to increase its active military forces eightfold along its Eastern front and encourage its member states to continue to supply the Ukrainian military with much needed munitions. Macron and Scholz are no longer pushing Ukraine to make territorial concessions, seemingly convinced that Russia has no real interest in peace after witnessing the appalling destruction at Irpin on their joint visit to Ukraine in June.
The strategy now appears to be to wear Russia down to the point Putin can no longer sustain his war effort and will be forced to make concessions. However, the fear is that Russia will resort to tactical nuclear weapons when its conventional weapons run out. This appears to be the only negotiating tool Putin has left in his arsenal.
This dangerous game of cat and mouse is reminiscent of the Cold War, although we never had a situation quite like Ukraine. The Soviet Union and US were always posturing, but never risked direct confrontation, although there were a few potential "doomsday" moments along the way.
I suppose that was because the Soviet Union had firm control over Eastern Europe and the US and its NATO allies respected those boundaries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Kremlin expected NATO to either fold, as the Warsaw Pact had, or continue to respect its hegemony in the region. Alas, that didn't happen and the Kremlin has been sore ever since.
Unlike Ukraine, Russia never dismantled its nuclear arsenal. When Trump pulled out of the INF nuclear treaty in 2019, he essentially gave the green light for further Russian deployment of these intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Both the US and Russia had dodged the agreement by having nuclear warheads on submarines all around Europe, but now both were free to once again deploy land-based nuclear missiles, which Russia is now doing in Belarus, supposedly with Lukashenko's consent. As seen in this DW documentary, this greatly increases the risk of nuclear confrontation.
One can argue that neither side is very good at keeping agreements, but outside of the Balkan civil war in the 1990s, NATO has not engaged militarily in the former Soviet sphere of influence. Since then, Russia has attacked Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine, as well as mount incursions into multiple other countries, the most violent being Syria. If there was any credence to the argument that NATO overstepped its "boundaries," that is long past. Russia's incursions are all fresh to the memory.
This doesn't stop the Kremlin from viewing NATO as an existential threat, especially now that it is deploying more forces along its Eastern borders, which Putin considers to be in the Russian sphere of influence. Afraid to risk direct confrontation, Putin chooses to terrorize people instead. He hopes that Western Europeans won't have the stomach for a long war, and that the longer he drags the war out in Ukraine the more likely these governments are to break ranks.
He had initially hoped for this to happen in Eastern Europe, believing that Hungary and Poland were amenable to his partition of Ukraine. This is a plan that apparently dated back to 2008 when Putin first approached Polish nationalist leaders. This gives you some idea how long this war has been brewing. Putin was very much upset with the turn of events in 2005 that saw Ukraine's pro-Western alliance rise to power and briefly control Kjiv through 2010. Fortunately for him, so much chaos ensued that he was able to get a pro-Kremlin president back into power in 2010, albeit by the thinnest of margins.
People forget that Ukraine long wanted to apply for EU membership, dating back to Kuchma's presidency, 1994-2005. In fact, Ukraine's denuclearization was an attempt to clear the path toward EU and even NATO integration. The Orange Revolution of 2005-10 sped up these efforts but was met with a harsh blowback from Moscow, which didn't want to lose Ukraine to the West. At the time, Ukraine was part of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a post-Soviet attempt to keep the former Soviet republics in Russia's sphere of influence. Even with the pro-Kremlin President Yanukovych, the EU initiated an associate agreement with Ukraine in 2012.
These efforts blew up in 2014, when Putin pressured Yanukovych to back away from the deal, which led to the fiery protests in the Euromaiden and Yanuovych's subsequent fall from power. With all of Russia's resources invested in the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, a deeply embittered Putin launched his first attack on Ukraine, taking over the Crimean peninsula and initiating the civil war in the Donbas.
In short, Ukrainians have suffered through eight years of Russian assaults on both their physical and emotional well being. These latest pot shots aren't going to deter them in their quest for EU integration. Their hope is that the West finally recognizes what type of man they are dealing with and will no longer press for concessions in the name of peace. There is no peace with Putin.
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