Russia has been systematically escalating its war against the Ukrainian civilian population for weeks, aiming to tip the balance on the battlefield by affecting the general morale. In reality, the dynamics of this invasion are not much different from previous ones: the initial shock of military operations usually has a limited scope. If it fails to achieve its quick victory objectives, it stops, and the conflict enters a second phase of stalemate on the front lines. In the attrition battle, one of the two sides eventually collapses when its economy crumbles, determining the final outcome of the war. This winter, we may be at the end of the second act, waiting for one of the contenders to throw in the towel in the third act.
Russian bombings are no longer directed solely at military or logistical infrastructures: ballistic missiles, jet-propelled kamikaze drones, and guided bombs are destroying supermarkets, food distribution warehouses, gas stations, hospitals, and railway networks. Everything that sustains civilian life is a target, precisely everything that has helped Ukrainians resist an aggression from a nuclear power.
Can this type of warfare openly proposed by Putin against civilians be countered? Ukraine has not anticipated some of these trends well. The massive deployment of Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet propulsion drones, faster and harder to shoot down than propeller models, had been foreseen for months, but a considerable part of the Ukrainian air defense was still oriented towards previous models.
Currently, Ukraine is partially defenseless against these new technological terrors, and solutions are not expected before three or four months, the time it will take for the new generation of interceptors, on which their scientists and engineers are working at full speed, to arrive. Additionally, Russia launches these drones in pairs or threes, not in large swarms. The goal is to keep the anti-aircraft alarm sounding in Ukrainian cities, halting certain industrial or commercial activities in the streets.
Ukrainian firefighters extinguish the fire on a train hit by a Russian drone near the border with Poland on Sunday.AFP
This strategy is accompanied by another major industrial push from Russia. The Kremlin's war economy has once again surpassed the West in aerial warfare after a few months where Ukrainian medium-range drones wreaked havoc on the Russian rear. Europe has not yet transformed its industry and continues to behave as if the continent were still at peace. In contrast, Vladimir Putin is putting all Russian capital into the war effort. The result is that Moscow's production of ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles exceeds the defense capabilities of the NATO. Currently, there are not enough Patriot anti-aircraft missiles or Western interceptors to protect Ukrainian airspace, despite Kiev's demands. Until the new Ukrainian ballistic missile developments, already in testing, arrive, Russia will remain ahead.
However, Russia's terror strategy is not leading it to win this war. Aerial attacks have little effect on the Ukrainian army, which holds the front lines and even pushes back the Russians in some areas. Without hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers (a feared second major recruitment wave) and a radical change in strategy, Moscow is unable to defeat the Ukrainian armed forces. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, two cities with the front line about 10 kilometers away, will not fall this year or the next. We are talking about the most fortified area of the Ukrainian war effort for 12 years, first in the Donbass war and then in the large-scale invasion.
This Wednesday, at least five people died and seven others were injured in a Russian Army attack on a bus in the Nikipol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region in central-eastern Ukraine, as reported by Ukrainian authorities. "The Russians attacked the bus with a drone. Five people died at the scene of the impact," wrote Dnipropetrovsk Governor Oleksandr Ganzha on his social media.
Putin's strategy does not seek decisive military victories but rather time and destruction: to ruin Ukraine while Western support erodes with pro-Kremlin party electoral victories, turning an indecisive battlefield war into a political attrition in European capitals.
However, Russia may also be nearing its economic and military limits due to Ukrainian bombings of its refineries, a key Russian source of war financing. The end is not near, but this winter could be decisive in this final chapter.
The energy truce, announced on Monday by Donald Trump on his Truth social network, only existed in his mind. While he was writing the message, several Russian drones were destroying three Ukrainian gas stations in different parts of Kiev. In response to the attack, Ukraine struck the Syzran refinery with long-range drones.
The blonde president had written that Ukraine and Russia "had agreed not to attack each other's energy targets," blaming the rise in diesel prices on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and not on the US war against Iran, which is currently closing the Strait of Hormuz (the main reason for the global rise in hydrocarbons).
The only truce respected in almost five years of war is the one that allowed United States envoys, businessmen Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, to travel safely to Moscow. However, during their subsequent visit to Kiev the next day, both businessmen had to take the train from Poland since they were unable to travel by plane as Russia had attacked the two civilian airports in the Ukrainian capital, closed since February 2022.