Putin’s military leadership faced unparalleled criticism in recent weeks from within the Russian establishment, after successful Ukrainian counteroffensives drove the Kremlin’s forces out of large swaths of occupied land in the country’s east and south. Allied with the troubled call-up of hundreds of thousands of troops, each new development helped fuel a sense of panic in Russia.
In a tacit acknowledgement that the war was not going according to plan, Putin named an overall commander for his forces in Ukraine for the first time over the weekend, a man known for brutality.
Surgei Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” and known for his merciless air campaign in Syria, was appointed the same day the bridge connecting Russia with annexed Crimea was severely damaged in a blast that dealt Putin a strategic and symbolic blow.
Putin said Monday’s deadly strikes were revenge, though Kyiv claimed they had been planned well in advance. Either way, they offered a further sign of the growing influence of hard-line voices as the war enters a decisive period with Russian troops on the retreat. On Wednesday, Ukraine claimed to have regained even more ground in the south, liberating five villages in the strategic Kherson region after a sudden breakthrough there this month.
“Putin has been persuaded to switch to a more aggressive line,” Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think tank and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in an analysis post on the Telegram messaging app.
“[He] is becoming a hostage of this situation, and if he hesitates next time, it may cause genuine annoyance on the part of those who are now invested in the war till a victorious end,” Stanovaya said.
The pro-war figures followed their celebration with a push for Putin to keep up the intensity.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, one of the most outspoken proponents of the war, declared after praising Monday’s strikes: “There will be others.”
The Russian-installed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, suggested that if Russia had conducted such strikes against energy and water supplies from the start of the war, Kyiv would have fallen months ago. He also expressed hope that “the pace of the operation will not slow down.”
Anton Krasovsky, a propagandist TV host and ardent war supporter, called for similar strikes “every day” so that “every Russian can see that we are winning.”
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who led the backlash against Russia’s military chiefs for battlefield failures this month, said he was “now 100% satisfied” with how the war was going, reminding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “Russia hasn’t really started yet.”
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But while the deadly attacks may have boosted some in Russia, they seemed unlikely to change the dynamic on the battlefield in a significant way.
“The attacks have not degraded Ukrainian military capabilities and are fundamentally irrelevant to the fighting in the northeast and south of Ukraine,” Tuck said.
Strikes have continued against civilian targets since Monday, but with nowhere near the same intensity.
Sustaining such attacks will require a constant supply of rockets, which Moscow is increasingly running out of, military analysts said. Already, Kyiv says Russia has been using more “kamikaze” drones, procured from Iran, as a cheaper and more dispensable alternative.
Russia seems to have the ability for short pulses of long-range missile fire, Tuck said, “but given what we know already about the Russian willingness to accept the infliction of civilian casualties, if they could sustain this form of attack for any length of time, then they would already have implemented such a campaign.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
