Once again, last night saw Russia launch massive drone and missile strikes across Ukraine, in what was one of its largest barrages in recent months. Coming so soon after Moscow’s two massive air raids last month on Kyiv and other major cities, it marks a dramatic switch to a high-risk strategy to end the four-year war in the next few weeks.
According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, overnight Russia launched 656 attack drones and 73 ballistic, cruise, and anti-ship missiles. That comes after firing 2,300 attack drones, 1,560 glide bombs and 108 ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital and other provincial centres last month.
Russia appears to be opening up a new “war for the cities”, targeting political and cultural centres, including art collections and museums, as well as banking and business centres. The aim is to demoralise the Ukrainian population, attempt to decapitate the government – yet again, and drive off foreign advisers, investors and supporters. Prior to the big attacks on Kyiv, starting on the weekends of 16 and 23 May, Moscow warned all members of foreign embassies to get out of town while they could. Almost all stayed put.
In the second big raid, the Russians fired the new Oreshnik hypersonic missile – for only the third time in the Ukrainian war so far. The Oreshnik has been billed as a wonder weapon – capable of speeds of Mach 10, 7,673 miles an hour. This means it will evade defence missiles like the Patriot. It can carry a variety of warheads and has nuclear potential.
The effect of the Oreshniks has been less than overwhelming. In November 2024 one was fired at a training ground in Dnipro. In January one hit near Lviv in the west of Ukraine – this appeared mainly to be a display of the missile’s range. On 31 October, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed an Oreshnik base inside Russia.
The aftermath of a missile strike on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv after Russian drone attack on 24 March (Photo: Mykola Tys/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)The battle of the cities carries huge risk for Ukraine, too, according to the former US Army chief General Jack Keane. In an intriguing essay for the Institute for the Study of War, the leading website on the Ukraine and Iran wars, Keane says that the Ukraine command mustn’t fall for the temptation to strike back at Russian centres of governance and culture, such as the Kremlin, because it would provoke an extreme and unpredictable reaction from Putin and his shrinking cabal – and this would be aimed at Europe as a whole.
The very terminology of the war of the cities recalls the closing stages of the dreadful turf war between Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran in the early years of the Ayatollahs, between 1980 and 1988. This, too, was a war of the cities as both sides’ capitals and key cities were bombed, first by aircraft, and then cruise missiles. Soviet Russia provided Tehran with a supply of Scud missiles. These were to be vital elements in a rearmament programme that followed the 1988 ceasefire, leading to Iran’s powerful drone and missile programme, which still continues to challenge and thwart the offensives of Israel and the US.
Russians in the cities are rattled. Putin’s government has urged bigger businesses and banks to buy their own air defence systems – radars and short-range missiles such as the Pantsir – and stick them on the roofs of their office blocks and factories. They should even think of buying the S-300 air defence missile system.
Civilians after a Russian strike on Kyiv on 14 May. Several districts of the city came under attack, with part of a residential building completely destroyed in one of the strikes. Seven people were killed and more than 40 others were injured (Photo: Ivan Antypenko/ Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)On the main battlefield, few claim victory or defeat. But it is clear that the Ukrainians’ concept of come-as-you-are and improv digital and drone warfare has seized the initiative. More forays are conducted by unmanned ground vehicles – UGVs – and concentrated drone strikes are cutting supply lines along the main highways supporting Russian forces. Fuel and ammunition dumps are being hit – but more crucially the troops across the south, and the population of Crimea as a whole, are running out of water.
The medium-range strikes by cruise missiles and souped-up drones over a thousand miles into Russia are having incremental effect. More important than the destruction of storage facilities are the hits on pumping stations, refining and oil cracking plants that are likely to take years to repair or replace. Shortage of fuel is an increasing refrain of the headlines of the Moscow press. Shipping from the Black Sea, and now increasingly from the Baltic ports, is more dicey.
If the new “strike the city and bash the population” tactic doesn’t work, Putin is likely to try to spread the war. This is why operational analysts think that the strike by a Russian Geran-2 jet drone on Galati in Romania on 29 May, hitting an apartment block and injuring two people, may have been no accident. It was testing the water – how quickly and how willingly would Nato respond to such a provocation in future.
The human consequences are grim for both nations and peoples – as President Zelensky didn’t attempt to conceal in his news conference yesterday. Russia has lost 1,365,470 troops on the battlefield since 24 February 2022, he said. This does not appear to be an exaggeration, as Nato analysis confirmed last month that Russia has lost half a million killed in that time. Ukraine doesn’t publish equivalent figures – they are state secrets – but these seem to be reaching 600,000. Significantly, Russia has been losing more than the army can recruit for three months now. Zelensky reported that in just one day, 31 May, Russia incurred 1,560 casualties.
Deployment of a Russian Oreshnik hypersonic, nuclear-capable missile system for combat duty at an undisclosed location in Belarus in December (Photo: Russian Defence Ministry / AFP via Getty Images)Despite the uptick in oil prices, thanks to the war in Iran, the economy is struggling – possibly more than Western media analysis calculates. The rouble is still strong – which is deceptive. Over 40 per cent of the budget goes on the war. Claims that the economy grew 13 per cent between 2020 and 2024, now prove to be bogus. An intriguing insight was given by Sweden’s foreign minister, Maria Malme Stenergard, in The New York Times last month. “Measuring night-time luminosity, an established way of assessing economic activity in countries where official statistics are not available or cannot be trusted, we have estimated that the economy actually contracted by around 8 per cent during this period.” She also said that inflation claimed at 10 per cent in 2024 was in reality round 21 per cent.
Putin seems to be betting on more war as the answer to breaking Ukraine and challenging his Western enemies, meaning principally the Nato Europeans. There is no more talk of deals about land and minerals – his forces can’t even take the whole of Donetsk oblast. The developers and fixers, Kushner, Witkoff and Dimitriov, have retreated to the shadows.
So what happens in the war of the cities and the possible spillover into Belarus, the Baltic states, and the Balkans now becomes critical. It is the big question the European Nato allies must address head on at their defence ministers summit in just under three weeks and the head of government annual meeting scheduled for Ankara next month. They have to decide how to meet the challenge of the new more erratic and unpredictable Putin. And Donald Trump may only be able to bark from the touchline.
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