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Ukraine has a key advantage over Russia: Moscow increasingly talks about strikes on Europe — WSJ
Russia is failing to achieve its desired result with intensified strikes on Ukraine because Kyiv has access to external resources and rear support beyond the country. Against this backdrop, Moscow is increasingly actively discussing the possibility of shifting attacks to European territory.
The Wall Street Journal reports this.
The publication notes that Russia faces a fundamentally geopolitical asymmetry. Moscow tries to force Ukraine to submit by strikes on shopping centers, power plants, ports, and other infrastructure facilities. At the same time, Kyiv can rely on external support to maintain economic resilience and ensure military logistics.
According to WSJ, Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s militarized economy directly affect the country’s ability to continue the war. Because of this, Russia’s advantage in firepower largely loses its meaning.
Western officials also link this situation to the expansion of Russia’s sabotage campaign, cyberattacks, and other hybrid operations. Their aim is to intimidate European leaders and voters.
As the publication writes, citing informed sources, US CIA Director William Burns, during a recent trip to Moscow, mainly warned Russia against expanding military actions to NATO members in Europe.
European countries have long supported the Ukrainian economy and military efforts. Russia, meanwhile, is forced to finance its war on its own under pressure from Ukrainian strikes and Western sanctions.
Russia’s two closest allies, Iran and North Korea, have collapsed financially. China, in turn, uses Russia’s difficult situation to obtain cheaper oil and gas, while itself facing economic problems.
German member of the European Parliament Sergei Lagodinsky stated that the Russian leadership aims to eliminate this imbalance as quickly as possible.
"They see that Ukraine can survive and continue to fight because it has access to external resources and international solidarity, and that is what they want to block or undermine," Lagodinsky said.
A significant portion of Russian territory, up to central Siberia, is now within reach of Ukrainian drones. Strikes by both countries are ongoing, one after another every night.
At the same time, the consequences of the attacks differ significantly for the sides. Russia is experiencing a major fuel crisis after Ukrainian drones disabled more than a third of the country’s oil refining capacity. In Ukraine, however, gas stations continue to operate in normal mode thanks to fuel imports from Europe, although Ukrainian refineries were destroyed as early as 2022 year.
The Ukrainian armed forces also use logistics centers in Poland, Germany, and Romania. In addition, Ukrainian defense enterprises have created production lines in various European countries.
With the exception of Belarus and North Korea, none of Russia’s neighboring states, including its official defense allies in Central Asia, openly assist Moscow in waging war. Even Belarus has recently tried to avoid new Western sanctions and possible Ukrainian military response.
In the Kremlin, as WSJ notes, they perceive the situation as intolerable. Russian authorities believe that NATO countries, through Ukraine, are causing strategic damage to Russia’s economy and military potential, including the space program, ballistic missile production, and the fleet of strategic bombers, while hardly bearing any costs for this.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center, called this situation an asymmetry in Russia’s ability to harm the West and force it to bear the costs of supporting Ukraine.
"There is an asymmetry in Russia’s ability to harm the West and force it to bear costs for supporting Ukraine," Gabuev said.
According to him, Ukraine has effectively shifted the war to the enemy’s territory and receives substantial support for these operations along the front line.
Russia, unlike Ukraine, does not have its own 'Ukraine' — an ally that could strike NATO while also taking hits in return. Closest analogs are Iran and Yemen’s Houthi movement, but their priorities in the Middle East only partially coincide with Moscow’s interests.
Therefore, as the publication notes, one of Russia’s main levers to influence European sentiment remains hybrid warfare.
Anna Notte, Eurasia Director at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said that in the Kremlin there is growing popularity of the idea of attacking military and logistical facilities in European countries to win the war.
According to her, such calls are growing louder, and the main question remains how far Russia is prepared to go.
Some officials warn that the next escalation step could be a limited one-off strike on one or two logistical targets in Europe involved in supplying aid to Ukraine. For this, Moscow could use, among other things, captured Ukrainian drones and missiles. Russian TV commentators have been openly calling for such attacks for several months.
As WSJ writes, such a move could have catastrophic consequences and, conversely, increase Europe’s readiness to resist Russia. This would occur against the backdrop of preparations for elections in France, Germany, and Italy, where pro-Moscow forces are gaining influence.
In Germany, the strengthening of Russia’s hybrid war has already produced an opposite result. German MP Norbert Röttgen noted that the threat from Russia is becoming increasingly evident to Germans, which strengthens the country’s political resolve.
At the same time, Western allies of Ukraine and Kyiv itself have the means to further pressure Russia in case of an escalation of the conflict. The United States could notably increase Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian ballistic missile batteries by allowing Starlink satellite network to be used to guide drones over Russian territory.
Ukraine, for its part, has so far refrained from strikes on Russian airports, although the country’s own civil aviation does not fly from 2022 year.
"One way or another, the Russians will widen the war, because in their grand strategy Ukraine is an obstacle, not a reward. Their goal is greater influence on Europe and beyond. NATO has failed to deter Russian aggression against Ukraine, and now the question is whether NATO can really deter Russian aggression against NATO itself," said Oleksandr Danilyuk, head of the Center for Defensive Reforms in Kyiv and a former military officer and intelligence agent.
He adds that strengthening attacks on Ukrainian cities from Moscow is a signal to other European countries that resisting Russia could come at an extraordinarily high price, and thus the Kremlin seeks to force them to submit to its will.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Україна має ключову перевагу над Росією: у Москві дедалі 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: ANTIKOR.
