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Smoke billowed over St Petersburg this weekend, after Ukrainian drones struck the city’s oil terminal. In Moscow, long queues formed at those petrol stations that were still open.
The increasing frequency and accuracy of Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes have caused Russia’s biggest fuel crisis in decades. It has also created a growing sense that the momentum in the war has changed. Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said last month: “We, the Germans, the UK, the French all are of the view that the tide has turned . . . Putin is going to lose.”
But few people believe that the Russian leader will simply accept defeat, so western policymakers are braced for a summer of escalation. “The question we’re all asking”, says one, “is what is Putin going to do?”
Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought among western strategists. The first holds that we are entering a very dangerous period and that a cornered Vladimir Putin is likely to lash out in an effort to change the direction of the war. A second school argues that Putin’s viable escalation options are actually pretty limited. So the bigger danger may be that western policymakers get so spooked by the threat of Russian escalation that they put pressure on Ukraine to back off.
There are four main escalation avenues. The first is conventional actions on the battlefield with Ukraine. The second is nuclear weapons. The third is a direct attack on Nato. The fourth is “hybrid warfare” — Russian covert efforts to attack western infrastructure or individuals.
There is an expectation that Russia will throw more troops into the “meat-grinder” of the frontline over the summer. Putin recently claimed that his armies had taken the town of Kostyantynivka, a key target for the Kremlin in the eastern Donetsk region. But those claims were denied and mocked by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Western officials reckon that Russia is now losing troops faster than it can replace them — at the rate of 35,000 killed or wounded a month. There is speculation that Putin might call a general mobilisation through conscription. But that would risk a public backlash.
After more than four years of costly fighting, there is little to suggest that Russia is on the cusp of a decisive breakthrough. Putin’s desire for revenge and escalation may instead manifest itself in more indiscriminate strikes — such as the missile and drone attacks that killed 30 civilians in Kyiv last week. Yet those tactics, while brutal, are unlikely to turn the tide of the war.
Throughout the conflict, Putin and those around him have dropped heavy hints about the use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia. But those threats are now taken less seriously than they were at the beginning of the war. Western decision makers believe that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has warned Putin against the use of nuclear weapons. And they think that the Kremlin understands the risk that the west could intervene directly in the war, if Russia went nuclear. The sheer frequency of nuclear sabre-rattling by Putin and his circle has diminished its intimidatory power. As one western official puts it: “He’s devalued the currency.”
Some western leaders are braced instead for a Russian provocation aimed at the Baltic states or Poland. Security officials in Latvia have said that Russia is “preparing military provocations”, potentially aimed at them.
A direct Russian attack seems unlikely. But western strategists have long been concerned by some kind of Russian intervention that could be dressed up as retaliation for Nato aggression or a move to protect Russian speakers in the Baltics. The idea might be to provoke a military and diplomatic crisis that divides the western alliance, leading to increased US pressure on Ukraine to make territorial concessions.
But would Putin really risk it? For the past four years, he has always avoided direct confrontation with Nato, despite concerns that Russia might attack the supply lines and bases on Nato soil that are funnelling weapons to Ukraine. Escalating in the Baltics might also require moving Russian troops from the Ukrainian front. Putin would also have to consider the possibility that opening a second front directly on Nato soil could go badly wrong — risking potential humiliation for Russia.
That leaves hybrid warfare. There has already been plenty of this over the past four years. Some of the better-known episodes include a plot to put bombs inside DHL parcels and an effort to assassinate the head of Rheinmetall, a leading German arms manufacturer. Russia continues to ostentatiously scope out key western infrastructure, such as undersea cables and energy pipelines.
But hybrid escalation, aimed at civilian infrastructure, also carries risks. There is little doubt that the west could retaliate. Security officials note that Russia, the US and its allies, and China may all have placed the cyber equivalent of unexploded bombs inside each other’s critical infrastructure.
Putin certainly has escalation options. His problem is that they are all bad. Nonetheless, there is little sign that the Russian leader is ready to accept defeat. So Ukraine and its western backers are braced for a dangerous summer. If they can get through it — while steadily increasing the pressure on Russia — they hope that Putin and those around him may have to accept reality and abandon their maximalist aims by the end of the year. An end to the Ukraine war may finally be in sight.
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