Russia’s air strikes on civilian targets across Ukraine this week are the latest sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin is inclined to escalate the war amid mounting losses on the battlefield and rising criticism at home.
The Kremlin has also promoted military leaders known for their brutality, ramped up troop deployments, and is once again calling to “completely dismantle” the government in Kyiv.
However, while Putin is clearly attempting to signal an escalation in Ukraine to appease hawkish elements in Russia, experts said it’s unlikely his current actions or posturing will slow Moscow’s losses or Kyiv’s momentum.
“Putin is losing and that is causing him to escalate in some ways, kind of as a defensive measure,” said Jeffrey Pryce, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
“He has silenced most of the voices that would counsel restraint in Ukraine and created this kind of echo chamber of aggressive nationalism, and now that it’s going badly, I think he has to respond to it.”
Upping air strikes
Putin followed through on his threat of “harsh” retaliation this week after an explosion destroyed a section of a bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean peninsula, which Putin personally opened in 2018.
A barrage of air strikes on Monday hit more than a dozen cities, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than a hundred. The United Nations human rights office described the attacks as “particularly shocking” and amounting to potential war crimes.
The bridge explosion was the latest embarrassment for Putin, coming after Ukrainian counteroffensives that have liberated occupied areas in the northeast and south.
But while the air strikes were exceptional in their volume, Russia has been shelling Ukraine throughout its invasion.
“We shouldn’t buy in too much to the Russian government’s claim that there’s something new,” said Chris Miller, an associate professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University who researches Russia.
“It’s an escalation in terms of the quantity of missiles relative to the average in the last couple of months, but there’s nothing new and dramatic in this, I don’t think really at all,” he said, adding Russia is already “all in” militarily.
“The one thing that remains is obviously the nuclear question. But beyond that, from a conventional perspective, they’re doing everything they can do and it’s just not working.”
Military leadership changes
Putin has made two eyebrow-raising changes to Moscow’s military leadership in recent days.
On Saturday, the Defense Ministry appointed Gen. Sergei Surovikin to lead what the Kremlin is still calling its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Russian military analysts say Surovikin brings a long track record of corruption and brutality — and human rights groups have said he bears responsibility for many of the atrocities committed by Russian forces he led in Syria.
The head of Ukraine military intelligence said in July that Surovikin “knows how to fight with bombers and missiles — that’s what he does.”
His appointment was cheered by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group who has been a leading hawk on Ukraine.
Last week, Chechnya’s warlord Ramzan Kadyrov announced that Putin has promoted him to the rank of colonel general. Kadyrov has consistently pushed for a more aggressive approach to Ukraine and recently called for nuclear attacks.
The changes also come as the Kremlin appears to be tacitly endorsing criticism on state television of the generals who have been in charge of the fighting in Ukraine thus far.
The shifts are a sign that Putin is siding with hawkish figures like Prigozhin and Kadyrov against the military, said Branislav Slantchev, a political science professor at University of California, San Diego, who blogs about the Russia-Ukraine war.
“And that’s dangerous in the sense that this is the side that’s been clamoring for escalation,” he said.
Troop mobilization
Putin’s mobilization of hundreds of thousands of military reservists last month was the clearest sign yet of his commitment to a long war in Ukraine.
Defense experts say any boost from the reinforcements won’t be felt for months, but the move has drawn fierce resistance at home, forcing Putin to make a rare admission of “mistakes” in its implementation.
Barry Pavel, vice president of the RAND Corporation’s national security research division, said the mobilization was causing more “pain points” for Putin than other decisions, as it exposes the Russian public to the reality in Ukraine.
“So how do you deflect from the domestic criticism that he’s getting? This is what we’re seeing, is partly, you know, reaction to some of that increased domestic discontent, especially from the hawk side.”
Pavel noted, however, that Putin’s own hawkishness had been on display throughout the war — and even before it, when he conducted nuclear exercises as tensions soared before the invasion.
“So to really screw up a metaphor, the hawk has not changed its stripes,” he said.
Miller said the mobilization was a clearer sign of Putin’s “resolve” in Ukraine than the recent missile strikes.
“Mobilization was a costly step for Putin to take, so that demonstrated a willingness to bear even more costs than was previously demonstrated, but the missile strikes are kind of minor by comparison,” he said.
Bellicose rhetoric
Putin’s allies responded to this week’s missile salvo by calling for more.
“It is time for fighting! Fiercely, even cruelly. Without looking back at whatever censures from the West,” senior Russian lawmaker Sergei Mironov, who leads the state-backed A Just Russia party, tweeted Saturday.
“The first episode was played. There will be others,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, said on Telegram, calling for “a full-fledged dismantling of the political regime of Ukraine.”
Pryce, a former special counsel for international affairs at the Defense Department, said there’s only one voice in Moscow that really matters when it comes to the direction of the war.
“There’s an ecosystem where people seem to be competing for who has the most bellicose rhetoric, but my sense is that it’s really only one person whose opinion really matters,” he said. “That’s Putin.”
If the Russian leader’s mobilization and airstrikes fail to turn the tide of the war, some Russia experts worry he could become cornered and turn to nuclear attacks as a last resort.
“We have been warning that Putin could escalate against cities because of his failures on the battlefield. That’s what’s happening,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told The Hill on Tuesday.
“We don’t expect this is the last of it. But it’s too soon to predict what happens next.”
Brett Samuels and The Associated Press contributed reporting