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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Strikes on Ukraine are not giving the Kremlin the desired result because of geopolitical asymmetry.
Russia faces a fundamental asymmetry in trying to force Ukraine into submission through intensified airstrikes on shopping centers, power plants, ports, and other infrastructure. In particular because Kyiv can rely on secure rear-area support outside its borders for both economic resilience and military logistics, The Wall Street Journal writes in its piece.
The paper notes that Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s militarized economy directly affect the country’s ability to continue the war. Accordingly, the one-sided geopolitical situation largely negates Russia’s advantage in firepower. It has also been the main reason, according to Western officials, driving an expansion of Russian sabotage campaigns, hacking attacks, and other hybrid operations aimed at intimidating European leaders and voters.
Citing informed sources, the WSJ writes that the chief message CIA Director John Ratcliffe delivered during his recent trip to Moscow was a warning to Russia against extending military action to NATO members in Europe.
For a long time European countries have supported Ukraine’s economy and military efforts. Russia, by contrast, is forced to pay for its war on its own while its economy is under pressure from Ukrainian strikes and Western sanctions. Russia’s two closest allies — Iran and North Korea — are bankrupt. And China is exploiting Russia’s difficult position to secure lower oil and gas prices while it too faces economic challenges.
Russian leadership believes they need to quickly correct this imbalance, German Member of the European Parliament Serhiy Lahodynskyi said: “They see that Ukraine can survive and continue to fight because it has access to external resources and external solidarity, and that is what they want to cut off or undermine.”
Much of Russian territory, as far as central Siberia, is now within reach of Ukrainian drones. Attacks by both countries on each other continue nightly. But one example of differing consequences is that Russia is fighting a full-scale fuel crisis because Ukrainian drones have disabled more than a third of the country’s refining capacity. By contrast, gas stations in Ukraine are operating normally thanks to fuel imports from Europe, even though Ukraine’s refineries were destroyed back in 2022.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces also use logistics hubs in countries such as Poland, Germany, and Romania, while Ukrainian defense enterprises have set up production lines across Europe.
Except for Belarus and North Korea, none of Russia’s neighbors — including its formal defense allies in Central Asia — openly helps it wage the war. Even Belarus recently has tried not to provoke new sanctions from the West or a military response from Ukraine.
From the Kremlin’s perspective the situation is unbearable: NATO countries are delivering strategic blows to the Russian economy and military potential, including its space program, ballistic missile industry, and fleet of strategic bombers, using Ukraine to do so — and paying almost nothing for it.
“There is an asymmetry in Russia’s ability to harm the West and force it to bear costs for supporting Ukraine,” said Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center director Alexander Gabuev. In his view, Ukraine has actively taken “the war onto enemy territory and receives significant support for those operations behind the front lines.”
Russia, meanwhile, is limited by the fact that Moscow does not have its own “Ukraine” — a partner that could strike NATO and absorb retaliatory strikes. Iran and the Yemeni Houthis are the closest analogues, but they have their own priorities focused on the Middle East, which only partially align with Moscow’s.
So Moscow is left with only one option — hybrid warfare as the key lever to change European sentiment.
Hannah Notte, director for Eurasia at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, noted that a view is gaining traction in the Kremlin that to win the war Russia must strike military and logistics targets in European countries. She said those voices are growing louder, and the question is how far Russia will go.
Some officials warn that Moscow’s next step in escalation could be a limited one-off strike — possibly using captured Ukrainian drones and missiles — against one or two logistics targets involved in supporting Ukraine on European territory. Commentators on Russian television have been loudly demanding exactly that for several months.
Of course, such a risk could have catastrophic consequences, strengthening Europe’s resolve against Russia precisely at a time when pro-Moscow forces are gaining momentum ahead of elections in France, Germany, and Italy, the paper writes.
However, in Germany’s case the intensification of hybrid warfare by Russia has already proven counterproductive. As German MP Norbert Röttgen said, it’s becoming increasingly clear to Germans that Russia is a threat to them too, and this is strengthening Germany’s political resolve.
At the same time, Western allies of Ukraine, and Ukraine itself, have the means to inflict even greater pain on Russia if the conflict escalates. The U.S. could sharply increase Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian ballistic missile batteries by allowing the Starlink satellite network to be used to guide drones over Russian territory. Kyiv, meanwhile, has so far refrained from strikes on Russian airports — despite the fact that Ukraine’s own civil aviation has not been flying since 2022.
“One way or another, the Russians will expand the war, because in their grand strategy Ukraine is an obstacle, not a prize. Their goal is greater influence over Europe and beyond. NATO failed to deter Russian aggression against Ukraine, and now the question is whether NATO can actually deter Russian aggression against NATO itself,” said Oleksandr Danyliuk, head of the Center for Defense Reforms in Kyiv and a former military officer and intelligence official.
He said that by increasing the destruction of Ukrainian cities, Moscow signals to the rest of Europe that any resistance is so painful that it is better to submit to the Kremlin’s will.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Україна має одну велику перевагу перед РФ, тому в Москві все частіше говорять про удари по Європі — WSJ". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ZN.ua.
