In a development that could portend dangerous escalation of an unremittingly violent military conflict, the Russian president has accused Ukraine’s security services of attempted sabotage of critical infrastructure inside Russia, including at a nuclear power plant north of the Ukrainian border. Coming from the Kremlin, the charge points to the growing audaciousness of Ukrainian attacks away from the frontlines, as underscored by the spectacular explosion at part of the Kerch Bridge in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula on Saturday. 

Also on Monday the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said he had ordered troops to deploy with Russian forces near Ukraine in response to alleged threats from Kyiv. The full extent of that deployment was not immediately clear, though Belarus’s army is said to consist of about 60,000 members. Reuters reported that Belarus had deployed six battalion-tactical groups, totaling several thousand, to the border areas earlier this year.

The Russian strongman, who has been coming under increasing fire from his own people for his multiplying failures with respect to Ukraine, claimed at a meeting of Russia’s security council that “the Ukrainian special services have carried out three terrorist acts against the Kursk nuclear power plant, blew up high-voltage power lines.” The Kursk plant, which supplies power to 20 Russian regions, is situated several miles west of Kursk and almost due north of the recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. In between is Russia’s Belgorod region, which has been subject to periodic attacks attributed to Ukraine in the months since Moscow launched its invasion in February. 

At the meeting President Putin hastened to add that “the damage was quickly eliminated” and that “no serious consequences were allowed,” while also accusing Ukraine’s SBU of attacks on the Turkish Stream pipeline, which runs  to Turkey from Russia under the Black Sea. He said that shelling at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine — over which Russians and Ukrainians are locked in a protracted battle for control — amounted to “nuclear terrorism.” 

The charge about Kursk is new, though, and if true would lend credence to the increasing volume and frequency of Ukrainian attacks against infrastructure targets inside the Russian Federation. That as much as anything else right now is pushing Mr. Putin to lash out even more: “If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia’s responses will be tough and in scale will correspond to the level of threats posed by Russia,” he said in the security meeting. 

Mr. Lukashenko hinted that the deployment of troops near the Ukrainian border was a response to a warning that Reuters reported was delivered through unofficial channels of Ukraine’s imminent plans for a “Crimean Bridge 2,” though no specifics were given. Ukraine, for its part, on Monday accused Moscow of using Iranian-made drones sent from Belarus as part of a fresh barrage of lethal strikes launched by Russian forces across Ukraine.

By Monday afternoon Ukraine was already reeling from ferocious retaliatory missile strikes that followed on the weekend attack on the key bridge to Crimea from the Russian mainland. Some cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea reportedly even overflew Moldovan airspace. Although Mr. Putin said that “a massive air, sea, and land-based high-precision long-range weapon delivered a massive strike on energy, military command, and communications facilities of Ukraine,” by most accounts civilian infrastructure and civilians bore the brunt of the rocket strikes. Yet emboldened by recent successes on the frontlines, starting with the liberation of Lyman and other towns, Ukraine will likely be anything but deterred. 

That is precisely what kicks any prospects of peace negotiations so far down the road that nobody can see them. President Zelensky’s insistence that he will undertake no negotiations with Russia as long as Mr. Putin is in power can be seen as either principled or posturing, but it is actions and not words that are keeping this war’s heat dial set to high. That is what might be causing some consternation in Washington even beyond President Biden’s warnings about a nuclear Armageddon, which a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and others dismissed as so much fear-mongering. 

Last week the New York Times reported that American officials said they believed that Ukraine was behind the recent attack that killed the daughter of “prominent Russian nationalist” Alexander Dugin, Daria Dugin, at Moscow.  American officials have, according to the Times, been “frustrated with Ukraine’s lack of transparency about its military and covert plans, especially on Russian soil” and there is fear that such covert operations “could widen the conflict.” 

There is no doubt that the SBU has the wherewithal to hit back at Russia inside Russia. That the Russian security service, or FSB, could start targeting Ukrainian officials is a growing concern. But covert operations that involve nuclear power plants inside Russia? The motivation may be unassailable, but  it does not tax the imagination much to see how those consequences could turn explosive. Inadvertently or otherwise.