Ukraine’s New Strategy Is To Bring the War Home to Russia

With artillery shells, drones, missiles, and ground forays, Ukraine has made over 2,000 attacks in 20 months on four Russian regions near or bordering Ukraine — Belgorod, Kursk, Oryol, and Voronezh. These attacks represent the first time since the Nazi invasion of 1941 that foreign forces have attacked Western Russia.With President Putin up for reelection in two months, the Kremlin and Russian state press are downplaying Ukraine’s drive to bring the war home to Russians. Crossing Kremlin red lines, the attacks break a compact that Mr. Putin has kept with the Russian people for nearly a quarter century: guaranteeing the nation’s security against foreign enemies.On Tuesday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to reporters’ questions in the Kremlin: “Of course, our military will continue to do everything in order to minimize the danger at first and then eliminate it entirely.” He did not specify what Russia’s military will do. In reality, governors of the border oblasts, or regions, are left to fend for themselves.Yet these governors find it increasingly difficult to tell residents to keep calm and carry on. On Tuesday, the governor of Kursk, Roman Starovoit, said on Telegram that a woman near the Ukrainian border had been killed as the result of an attack “from the Ukrainian side.” The governor said his oblast has been attacked 41 times since January 1, and 1,906 times since the war started 20 months ago.Also on Tuesday, fuel tanks in neighboring Oryol oblast were attacked by three drones, causing a fire that injured three people, Governor Klychkov said on Telegram. Oryol city is about 140 miles east of Ukraine. Ukrainian drones have ranges up to 600 miles. At Belgorod on Tuesday, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, gave his daily tally on Telegram of 33 drone and artillery attacks from Ukraine.Over the last 10 days, Ukrainian attacks have damaged 132 houses and 812 apartments, largely at Belgorod city, which has a population of 400,000. The bombings forced 300 people to winter in emergency shelters. In a modern city where schools were closed and Orthodox Christmas masses canceled, the governor wrote: “Over the past 24 hours, we have received 1,300 applications to send children from Belgorod to country school camps in other regions.”Referring to oblasts deeper inside Russia, the governor reported to residents: “I called my fellow governors from the Voronezh, Kaluga, Tambov, and Yaroslavl regions. They are all ready to help us.”Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod seem to mirror Russia’s attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, 50 miles to the west. In 2022, heavy Russian shelling damaged or destroyed one quarter of the housing stock of Kharkiv, a city of 1.2 million persons. Belgorod is a major transit hub for war materiel to Russian units that attack Kharkiv. However, Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod seem to be largely indiscriminate, hitting shopping centers and apartment high rises. “A missile warning siren has been launched in Belgorod and the Belgorod region,” Mr. Gladkov warned his 410,000 followers Tuesday at 1:33 p.m. local time. “If you are at home, do not go near the windows. Take shelter in rooms without windows with solid walls (hallway, bathroom, toilet, pantry). If you are outside, go to a shelter or other safe place.”In a city where bombs broke 45,000 square feet of glass in one week, warnings are taken seriously. On December 30, a Ukrainian attack on Belgorod killed 25 civilians, including five children. This attack came the day after Russia fired 158 drones and missiles at targets across Ukraine, killing at least 47 civilians.“People realized there really is a war going on and now it’s come to Belgorod, maybe not for the first time, but the most grave and frightening,” a Belgorod resident told Reuters after the December 30 strike. Noting that New Year’s Eve fireworks were canceled, he added: “Clearly no one wants to go out and wander round a deserted city, catching pieces of shrapnel flying past.”Ukraine has a policy of rarely acknowledging attacks on Russian soil. However, last week Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence released on Telegram a two-minute video that purports to show Ukrainian soldiers moving through a forest in Belgorod’s Shebekino region, planting a land mine and attacking a Russian patrol. Last summer, two Russian exile groups, the Freedom of Russia Legion, and the Russian Volunteer Corps, made similar cross-border forays into Belgorod.In response, nationalist groups called this week for Russia’s army to create a 10-mile-wide buffer zone inside Ukraine’s eastern border to protect Belgorod and other Russian oblasts. Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War rejected this idea, saying it “would be a massive operational undertaking that would require a grouping of forces far larger and significantly better resourced than what Russian forces currently have concentrated along the entire international border with Ukraine.”If cross border attacks are designed to lower morale and increase jitters among Russian troops, they may be working. Last week, a Russian anti-aircraft gun operator in the Rostov border region mistook Russian paratrooper drills for a Ukrainian invasion and opened fire, killing two of his own men.In another friendly fire accident, Russian air defenses shot and damaged over northern Crimea on January 2 one of Moscow’s most-advanced fighter jets, a Russian Su-35. Also on January 2, a Russian warplane accidentally bombed a Russian village, Petropavlovka, in the border oblast of Voronezh.Responding to the December 30 bombing of Belgorod, Mr. Putin vowed that the attacks would “not go unpunished.” In reality, he is downplaying the war before the March 15-17 presidential election. There is no question that he will win another six-year term. He just does not want messiness.One year ago, Russia’s president gave his 2023 New Year address flanked by soldiers in uniform, and his speech focused heavily on his war in Ukraine. This time, his 2024 New Year address barely touched the war. He spoke against a traditional Kremlin backdrop of onion domes, snow, and twinkling stars.

Ukraine’s New Strategy Is To Bring the War Home to Russia

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