Russian missiles hit energy infrastructure in more than half of Ukrainian regions
The barrage began around midnight and lasted well past dawn. It was apparently Moscow's biggest attack on Ukraine in weeks.
Euronews Europe
Three weeks after Ukraine's bold attack on Russia's Kursk region, experts are still trying to assess the long-term impact of a war that has already dragged on for more than two and a half years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the offensive created a “buffer zone” to contain Russian attacks on the cities of Kharkiv and Sumy while depleting Russian reserves. But those goals did not stop Russia from launching a massive missile and drone attack on Ukraine on Monday that has killed at least five people and cut off power and water to millions in the war-torn country.
“Like most Russian attacks before it, this one was equally heinous and targeted critical civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky said.
Even before Monday's attack, Ukrainians were evacuating parts of the Donetsk region as the Russian army continued its eastward advance. Still, Ukrainian forces, which entered Kursk and captured hundreds of Russian soldiers, held control of nearly 1,000 square kilometers, a small part of the region home to over a million Russians.
Invasion of Ukraine: What is behind Russia's slow response to the Ukrainian attack?
Zev Faintuch, director of research and intelligence at the international security firm Global Guardian, told USA TODAY the offensive had a “try-your-own-medicine logic.” Faintuch doubts the tactical benefit but says the offensive has boosted Ukrainian morale and weakened Russian morale.
The offensive also signals to Western backers that with more support it can inflict serious damage on Russia's military and economic infrastructure, Faintuch says. And it could fuel resistance in Moscow while offering the opportunity to swap land as part of a diplomatic settlement.
The Washington Institute for War Research wrote in an assessment of the course of the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be demanding that his military recapture the conquered territories without sacrificing the stability of his regime or slowing down the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine. Also not up for debate is the “dismissal of his incompetent but loyal lieutenants,” the assessment said.
The results of such a strategy cannot yet be predicted, the assessment continues.
Putin has blamed the West for the surprise incursion, although U.S. officials have said they knew nothing about the incursion. Putin called it a “major provocation” and again accused the U.S. of using the Ukrainians as proxies. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a top adviser to Putin, said Russia must now expand its goals to capture all of Ukraine and “mercilessly defeat and destroy” the enemy.
Joe Chafetz, an intelligence analyst at Global Guardian, said the invasion, while far from decisive, has forced Russia to make difficult decisions. It also highlights the possibility that Putin may not be able to end the war on his own terms, Chafetz said.
“If nothing else, Kyiv's advance to Kursk has shown that Ukrainian forces are capable of complex mechanized advances,” he said. And if Ukraine can repeat that success, Russia's strategy of gradual and irreversible advance could fail, he said.
Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow in the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, was an adviser to Putin's opponent Alexei Navalny before he died mysteriously in a Russian prison six months ago. Luzin says he isn't sure what the reports that Ukraine controls more than 90 villages in Kursk really mean. If a few Ukrainian soldiers drive into a town and nobody stops them, are they controlling it?
“Villages and towns … are now in the military sphere of influence of Ukraine because the municipal administrations have largely fled,” he told a forum last week, adding: “We do not know whether we are at the beginning, middle or end of this military operation. We will only understand this over time.”
Putin condemns “provocation”: Ukrainian troops march into Kursk
Luzin also says Russian society's apparent total indifference to the Ukraine offensive could be an indicator of indifference to Putin's goals of capturing Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and holding Crimea – territory Russia captured a decade ago and which Ukraine is struggling to regain.
This raises the question of how many sacrifices Russian citizens are willing to make in Ukraine.
“What does this mean for us? What does this mean for Ukraine?” asked Luzin. “It means that if the Russians don't care about Kursk, they will never care about Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and other occupied territories of Ukraine.”
