Significance of the recent Ukrainian attacks on Moscow

Mahmoud al-Batakoushi

The latest phase of the fighting and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, is witnessing a sudden Ukrainian escalation by launching qualitative strikes in the heart of Moscow to the point of attempting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin using drones, which indicates Kyiv’s desire to disperse the Russian army and work on targeting the infrastructure prior to the upcoming Ukrainian attack, despite its high cost, as Russia resorts to responding by carrying out a series of powerful attacks against the Ukrainian capital and other Ukrainian regions, which confirms that the coming days are fraught with further escalation.

Russian army strategy

The Russian army had recently announced its success in shooting down eight drones that tried to attack Moscow to strike vital and strategic targets, by disabling three of them with electronic devices and shooting down the other ones with Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile systems inside the Russian capital. The Ukrainian forces also launched a series of attacks with drones on oil pipeline facilities inside Russia, including the Transneft terminal in the Pskov region, which serves the huge Druzhba oil pipeline, which transports crude oil from Siberia to Europe, as well as the targeting of power lines in the Russian region of Belgorod bordering Ukraine, which led to a fire in two large companies, while the governor of the Russian Krasnodar region announced a few days ago that a fire had occurred due to an attack by a Ukrainian done on the Afipsky oil refinery near the region’s capital.

Russian control

In this context, Ahmed El-Anani, a researcher in international affairs, emphasized that the escalation of the Ukrainian attack on the Russian interior has much significance, as it has been proven beyond doubt by the continuous and unlimited Western support seeking to deny Russia a victory for fear of Russian expansion, especially with Moscow’s assertion of its desire recently to fully control the rest of the Donetsk region, as the fall of Bakhmut at the hands of Russia would open the way for the Russian army to advance towards the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which are two of the main cities in the Donetsk region, and thus establish its control over the region, as it is one of the four Ukrainian regions that have been declared annexed to the Russian bear, and this is considered a real threat to European and American interests.

Sanctions on Moscow

Anani added that the intensification of Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia confirms Kyiv’s desire, supported by Western countries and at the forefront by the United States, to spread terror in the hearts of the Russian people, hoping to create a state of dissatisfaction against Putin’s regime.

He indicated that Kyiv is trying to obtain any symbolic gain after the Russian army tightened its control over the strategic city of Bakhmut, which witnessed great resistance that extended for more than seven months, so it is trying to prove to Moscow that it is able to regain more lands that Russia controlled so that it does not become a burnt card for the Western countries that support it, whether with weapons, intelligence information or food aid.

Anani stressed that Ukraine is well aware of the danger of not achieving any victory or gain, even if it was moral, as the people of Western countries are expressing their dissatisfaction with directing part of their money in favor of Ukraine to confront Russia or insisting on imposing economic sanctions on Moscow, because that had disastrous results for Western citizens who have suffered from the fires of this war, which has been raging for more than a year, making them put strong pressure on their governments in order to find a formula for resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict peacefully, even if it is at the expense of Ukraine giving up some of its lands in favor of Russia, which inevitably leads to the collapse of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dreams and heralds the end of his rule.