Moscow’s missile barrage on cities across Ukraine has drawn celebratory comments from Russian officials and pro-Kremlin pundits, who in recent weeks have actively criticized the Russian military for a series of embarrassing mishaps in the field of battle
Russian nationalist commentators and state media war correspondents praised Monday’s attack as an appropriate and expected response to Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in the northeast and south and a weekend attack on a key bridge between Russia and Crimea, Russia’s prized Black Sea peninsula. annex in 2014.
Many argued, however, that Moscow would have to keep up the intensity of Monday’s missile attacks to win the war now. Some analysts suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin is becoming hostage to the views of his own supporters on how the campaign in Ukraine should be conducted.
“Putin’s initiative is weakening and increasingly dependent on circumstances and those who are forging ‘victory’ (in Ukraine) for him,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the independent think tank R.Politik, in an online comment Monday. .
Putin’s supporters have been calling for drastic steps on the Ukrainian battlefield for weeks. Those calls intensified over the weekend, shortly after an explosion at the Kerch bridge linking Crimea with Russia sent shockwaves around the world. The bridge, the longest in Europe, is a prominent symbol of Russian military power and was opened by Putin himself in 2018.