Moscow finally is blasting Kiev: where is the war headed?

Among the more sensationalist and lurid commentaries posted on youtube in the past 24 hours we see many suggesting that Russia’s massive missile attack on Kiev during the night of 23-24 May using the Oreshnik and an array of other unstoppable hypersonic attack weapons may well lead to a full kinetic war between Europe and Russia if not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow. Even very responsible interviewers have put this question to very responsible and authoritative experts like Jeffrey Sachs. This may be good for the ratings of the given youtube platforms, by which I mean the number of ‘hits’ the interview receives, but it alarms the public without reason and does not shed light on what is really going on.

The latest Russian attack, using not only the ground launched Oreshnik but also air and sea launched missiles, indeed brought the war to a new threshold that the Russian foreign and military establishment in Moscow and even the broad Russian public has been demanding, but which President Putin until now resisted.

The reasons behind the pressure on Putin are multiple and bear mention here. Several of the most critical ones were set out by the Russian political commentator Georgy Bovt on the national radio station Business FM this morning. First, time is now working against the Russian forces, whereas for the first 4 years of the war of attrition time was on the Russian side. The Ukrainians have received not only complete missiles and drones from Europe in increasing numbers and destructive capacity, but also jointly run production facilities for these weapons which are now putting out perhaps 50 medium range missiles or powerful strike drones per month capable of hitting deep into Russia, as far as Moscow and Petersburg. By year’s end these factories will be supplying the Ukrainian forces with large numbers of such weapons. One must assume that Russia is presently incapable of destroying all of these production sites and has decided that it is more effective to knock out the head, that is, decapitation of the Zelensky regime.

Note: the latest attack on Kiev was directed strictly at military installations said to be the command and control centers of the Ukrainian armed forces in Kiev and nearby suburbs. This was intended as a warning of what is now surely to come, namely the blow against the political regime on Bankovaya Street, possibly murdering Zelensky himself and his confederates.

The attack of the 23-24^th demonstrated Russia’s ability to penetrate Kievan air space at will, with only one of its dozens of missiles claimed to be have been downed by the Ukrainians, with large depletion of the Kievan air defense missiles, said to have been the most dense and effective in the country. It was a demonstration of strength meant to give teeth to the warning from the Russian authorities in the day before the 9^th May parade in Moscow that the diplomatic community should quit Kiev lest their staff be killed in the coming attacks. That was laughed off by Chancellor Merz and other European leaders when it was issued. Surely, they are laughing no more.

We may now expect the emptying of foreign embassies and an end to the ‘diplomatic tourism’ of European leaders to Kiev for photo opportunities of their support for Zelensky and Co. which got on the nerves of the entire Russian foreign policy establishment for the past several years because it underlined the inadequacy of the way Putin was directing the war.

Why President Putin did not move to destroy the Zelensky regime till now is a question over which many, myself included, are scratching out heads. I will not venture guesses now, but will return to the issue when the tea leaves are more readable.

What is clear is that the murderous Ukrainian attack on a college dormitory in Starobilsk in the Russian Lugansk oblast which killed 25 students, mostly young women, all of which was denounced by the Kremlin as a terror attack and provoked the Russian counter strike on Kiev could have and probably should have been used by Moscow for an open declaration of war on Ukraine. By all measures, the drone strike on Starobilsk was a suitable casus belli. If it had been used that way by Moscow, then the West could not ignore the causality of the Russian ‘escalation’ as it has done, devoting almost no journalistic coverage to the event in Starobilsk, to the fury of Russian commentators. Here again I am stymied by this timidity of the Kremlin to call a spade a spade. Instead, all we heard from Moscow was bleating from Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Zakharova.

Nonetheless, the die is cast. Will this lead to a European military response? My answer is a resounding ‘no.’ You can sleep soundly, dear readers, with both ears on the pillow, as the Russians say.

Europe’s response was to pledge further support to Kiev and particularly to begin work on still another round of sanctions on Russia intended to force Moscow to negotiate its own capitulation. That is utter rubbish and tho European leaders issuing this call know full well that they cannot dare attack Russia today lest their own capitals become the targets of unstoppable Russian missiles, of which there are now plenty in production. The so-called iron dome air defense of Europe is so far just a talking point, nothing more. And even if it were budgeted for, from a technical point of view it makes as much sense as constructing a modern day Maginot Line: it will provide no protection against Russia’s most advanced missiles, as we have just seen.

I close this discussion by touching upon the current state of mind of the broad Russian public to which I alluded in the beginning. What I hear, not from old friends, but from younger professionals is that in the Russian countryside the war is really being felt. The large numbers of deaths of men of all ages in the Special Military Operation are not being divulged by official Russian sources, but the reality is the emptying out of little towns across Russia, especially in deprived regions where men have been more likely to volunteer for service, so that the only remaining population is widows. Obviously the Russians are not creating mass cemeteries so that there is nothing for Western satellites to spot and publicize in the media. But it is clear that the changes in military technology over the past 4 years, and the shift from an artillery war where the Russians had a 10:1 advantage from the outset to a drone war, where Ukrainians are doing much better has resulted in rising Russian casualties to the level that finally is pressing the Kremlin leadership to get serious about putting an end to the bloodshed sooner rather than later.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026