Putin plots summer of relentless attacks on Ukraine
Sensing US weakness, Russia is mounting more aerial and ground assaults on Ukraine.
As President Donald Trump is pulling back in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing forward.
Moscow is ramping up its ground offensives and bombing campaigns against cities across Ukraine as its invasion enters a fourth summer. At the same time, the US decision this week to stop delivery of some weapons to the Ukrainians hands Putin a significant boost to his efforts to weaken Western support that is central to sustaining Kyiv’s resistance.
Putin, in a Thursday call with Trump, signalled that he had no intention of heeding the US president’s calls to end the war. Instead, he reiterated that his goals remained the same as when he invaded: to reassert Russian dominance over Ukraine and force the West to withdraw its support for Kyiv.
“Our president said that Russia will achieve its goals, that is, the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs,” said Yuri Ushakov, a close adviser to the Russian leader, according to state news agency TASS. “Russia will not back down from these goals.”
Hours after the call, a barrage of Russian drones and missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital, wounding at least 23 as Kyiv residents sheltered until the early hours of the morning.
Putin’s strategy is aimed at breaking Ukraine’s ability and will to fight the war, by ratcheting up pressure on its military and civilian population as the country’s most powerful backer shuffles toward the sidelines. The weapons that the US halted include air-defence interceptors that have been helping to protect Ukrainian cities from aerial barrages that have been increasing in intensity.
Ukraine now faces a summer of relentless attacks from its larger neighbour, with Trump’s efforts to bring about peace stalled. Putin expressed a willingness to engage in negotiations, Ushakov said, but no new dates for talks have been set.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he had held a telephone call with Trump, discussing Russian air strikes and frontline developments. Zelensky said they had “agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies,” adding that their teams would meet, but without noting any US commitments.
Zelensky has repeatedly highlighted Ukraine’s need for missiles for its Patriot air-defence systems, the only type that can shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.
Germany is in “intensive discussions” with the US about procuring additional Patriots for Ukraine, a government spokesman said Friday, including possibly buying a system from the US. But production bottlenecks could impede that effort, another official said.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius will discuss the issue during a trip to Washington this month, the spokesman said. Germany has already donated three of its own Patriot batteries to Ukraine.
The latest developments are bolstering Russia’s confidence that it can outlast Ukraine and its supporters in a war of attrition. Ukraine will have to husband matériel, and the move will likely accelerate Russian gains on the battlefield, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in an analysis Thursday.
Russia has massed around 50,000 troops in Ukraine’s northern Sumy province, advancing to around 12 miles from the regional capital, a new target for Moscow. Russia has roughly three soldiers for every one Ukrainian fighting there, according to Ukrainian troops.
Ukraine has managed to halt the Russian advance for now, but the offensive has further stretched Ukraine’s meagre forces, which are suffering from manpower shortages. Russia is pressing at several spots along the 750-mile front lines, arcing from the northeast to the south, forcing Ukrainian commanders to send some of their best units to plug gaps.
Russia’s advance accelerated in the spring. Moscow threw fresh troops onto the battlefield, as increased foliage helped conceal their movements.
Still, Russia’s progress has been incremental and coming at a heavy cost in lives. Russian forces haven’t seized a significant city since capturing Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine in February 2024.
“It’s been slow from the Russian perspective,” said Nick Reynolds, research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “A lot of that is down to the difficulties of Russian ground forces. The level of attrition they are taking has made it difficult for the Russians to apply more pressure.”
But gaining territory might not be the most important aim for Russia at this stage of the war. Instead, some analysts said, Putin wants to chew up the troops and equipment of his smaller neighbour and undermine support from civilians as well as in the West.
“We should measure not the square kilometres of territory captured but the ratio of losses, because it’s hard to compensate for losses,” said Taras Chmut, head of Come Back
Alive, a charity supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army. “Our global aim is to make the ratio of losses catastrophic for them.”
Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, has repeatedly said that Ukraine can’t defeat Russia by staying on the defensive. “Of course, we won’t remain in mindless defence,” he told reporters last month.
A significant increase in air strikes is battering Kyiv and other cities with missiles and explosive drones, causing mounting civilian casualties, damaging buildings and exhausting residents.
“The enemy,” said Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, head of Ukraine’s SBU security service, “is trying to sow terror.”
The smell of smoke pervaded across Kyiv after the overnight air raid Friday. Russia used 539 attack drones, seven ballistic and four cruise missiles in the latest bombardment, the majority of which were launched at the capital, according to the Ukrainian air force. Ukraine intercepted the majority of the munitions, but the ones that hit set fire to homes and apartment buildings in the city.
“All of this is clear evidence that without truly large-scale pressure, Russia will not change its dumb, destructive behaviour,” Zelensky said in a social-media post after the attack. “For every such strike against people and human life, they must feel appropriate sanctions and other blows to their economy, their revenues, and their infrastructure.”
Ukraine, meanwhile, is stepping up efforts to weaken Russia’s ability to fight by striking far from the front lines. Long-range drones relentlessly target Russian military equipment and production facilities inside Russia, inflicting 15 times the cost of the drones, according to Syrskiy. Shorter-range craft are taking on a growing role striking ammunition and fuel stores close to the front lines.
Early Thursday, Ukrainian forces said they had struck a military store in the occupied eastern region of Donetsk, destroying guided-missile and rocket-artillery ammunition.
Officials from the SBU catalogued a series of long-range strikes in recent days. On Tuesday, Ukrainian drones hit a factory in Izhevsk that produces air-defence systems and drones. Explosive craft destroyed an air-defence system and three helicopters in occupied Crimea on June 28, a day after drones destroyed two Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers.
Ukraine is also targeting Russian military commanders and scientists using both strikes and assassinations.
The Russian Defence Ministry said Thursday that the deputy commander of its navy, Maj. Gen. Mikhail Gudkov, had been killed in Russia’s Kursk region, which is across the border from Sumy. Unofficial Ukrainian and Russian social-media channels earlier reported that he had been killed in a missile strike on a command post.
Wall Street Journal
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