Russia’s
latest attack on Ukraine shows maximalist war aims remain unchanged
Dan Sabbagh
in Kyiv
As
President-Elect Trump talks up negotiations, Putin has made clear his position
hasn’t changed since launching invasion in 2022
Sun 17 Nov
2024 18.04 GMT
Millions of
Ukrainians woke up early on Sunday morning to a massive Russian missile and
drone attack on their country’s infrastructure, the biggest assault from Moscow
since the end of August and the first large-scale attack since the US election.
Donald Trump
once promised to settle the Ukraine war in “24 hours” but the 120 missiles and
90 drones aimed at the nation’s utilities is a reminder that Moscow’s
maximalist aspirations to cow and subjugate its neighbour remains unchanged.
The military
may use electricity, water and gas, but the obvious reality is that in any
outages of utilities, it is civilians across the country who will be
disproportionately affected, just as a harsh winter looms where temperatures of
-10C (14F) are not uncommon and -20C is not unknown.
The true
target of such a widespread attack – from Lviv in the west, to Odesa in the
south, and the capital Kyiv – is national morale. Even when the incoming
missiles are largely intercepted, as they were on Sunday, the air raid alarms
in the small hours and explosions in the distance sap people’s energy, even
though the overwhelming desire in Ukraine to resist remains undimmed.
A Ukrainian
woman living in Kyiv, who asked that her name not be used because of the
reference to her family, said the dilemma was always whether to wake her
10-year-old son and go into a shelter or leave him and hope the danger passes.
Near nightly drone attacks on Kyiv have already left many in the capital short
on sleep.
Among the
munitions deployed, Ukraine believes, were seven Kinzhal hypersonic missiles,
which can in theory be nuclear armed and travel at four to 10 times the speed
of sound. But Russia’s missile arsenal has been sharply depleted from the early
stages of the war, meaning that it is likely to have been building up stocks to
use in a large-scale attack.
Such studied
Russian cynicism is also apparent elsewhere. Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor,
spoke to Vladimir Putin for an hour on Friday. The Kremlin afterwards suggested
nothing had changed in its negotiating position, and that its full-scale
invasion of 2022 was the “direct result” of a Nato policy that aimed at
“creating a staging ground against Russia on Ukrainian soil”.
The Kremlin
statement also insisted that the west should recognise “the new territorial
realities” an unsubtle reference to Russia’s occupation of nearly a fifth of
Ukraine – and then referred back to a Putin speech made in June at Russian’s
foreign ministry, which spelled its demands in fuller form.
In that
address, Putin demanded, again, the “demilitarisation and denazification” of
Ukraine. Russia had previously demanded, in negotiations in 2022, that
Ukraine’s army be reduced to just 50,000 and has said it wants four eastern and
southern Ukrainian regions, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia of which only the
fourth, Luhansk, is fully occupied.
Not
surprisingly Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a different view in a
radio interview with Suspilne, the country’s public broadcaster. Victory, he
said, would amount to “a strong Ukraine” emerging either on the battlefield or
through diplomacy, though he was prudent not to be too specific about what that
meant.
While there
may be signs, expressed behind the scenes, that Ukraine is willing to accept
the loss of some occupied territory for a peace, Russia’s demands appear to go
far beyond that, and may leave Ukraine with little choice but to try and fight
on, even if the US walks away from supplying military aid.
How
successful it could be is uncertain. Ukraine did shoot down or neutralise 85%
of the missiles and 94% of the drones, but it proved disturbingly easy for
Russia to knock out entire power stations in the spring with a barrages of
missiles at a time when air defences were stretched.
Despite
Trump’s election and talk of peace, such is the scale of Russian aggression –
as demonstrated on Sunday morning – that an end to the war still appears a long
way off.
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