A peevish spokesman for Vladimir Putin bristled with indignation this week at Donald Trump’s description of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “like kids fighting in the park”.
It’s not, Dmitry Peskov pouted, the conflict is an “existential question” for Russia. “This is a question of our security and the future of ourselves and our children, the future of our country,” continued Putin’s spokesman who has grown more accustomed to preening with pleasure at the relentless assaults on Ukraine from the White House this year.
He is right. Victory for Russia was once defined as regime change in Kyiv. But it really need only be a messed up Ukraine, unstable, violent and impoverished.
Because a democratic Ukraine enjoying cultural renaissance, freedom, and economic growth with lots of Russian speakers shows Russia’s population that there’s an alternative to the kleptocratic autocracy they currently endure.
As the summer fighting season gets underway in the fourth year of Putin’s full scale invasion of its neighbour, Russia has clearly shifted its main effort to forever destabilizing Ukraine.
Kyiv, meanwhile, has demonstrated that it is no longer on the back foot, and that it is far from defeated. Indeed two years after its failed summer counter offensive, Kyiv is growing in strength and confidence.
Ukraine doesn’t have the capacity to drive Russia out of its lands this year. But it is hanging on and by next year may find it has the upper hand as European aid begins to come through to replace the military support that the US has withdrawn.
Donald Trump has provided no new military support this year. About $3.85 billion remains unspent from previous allocations – after that… nothing.
Russian forces have renewed their attacks around Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka on the eastern front. The aim here is to try to encircle Ukrainian forces and cut the supply routes to Kramatorsk, the administrative headquarters of Ukrainian held Donetsk province which Russia has mostly captured – and illegally annexed.
Ukrainian military sources on the ground have reported a massive increase in the range and efficacy of Russian fiberoptic guided drones with a range up to 15 miles unspooling a filament of optical cable directly connected to an operator on the ground.
The guidance system makes them invulnerable to jamming equipment used by Ukraine. Elite Russian drone forces have been deployed from the Russian counter attacks to drive Kyiv’s forces out of Kursk to the eastern front, they said.
The results have been very small advances by Russian troops, at enormous cost. Nato estimates that around 950 Russians are being killed every day.
Although casualty figures are rarely accurate, live video feeds show small numbers of Russian and Ukrainian troops scrabbling for cover and dodging drones in the dust and rubble of apocalyptic landscapes – which are now believed to be responsible for more than 70 per cent of casualties.
Ukraine has repeatedly offered an unconditional 30-day ceasefire and face-to-face meetings between Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin. The US efforts to broker an armistice have gone nowhere while Russia is trying to capture more of Ukraine.
Putin may have given up on regime change but he wants to take all of the territories Russia has illegally annexed – Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as hanging on to Crimea. If he manages this he may be able to convince European leaders that a peace along lines defined by the Kremlin is the least-bad outcome.
This summer his main targets continue to be the central section of the eastern front but he is also driving hard on Ukraine’s northern border with incursions and the capture of small border villages.
This allows Moscow to add pressure on Kyiv – keeping the battle closer to Ukraine’s centres of power by putting major cities, and regional capitals, like Sumy and Kharkiv under constant threat from artillery and short range rockets.
Russia’s wider air campaign has been drastically ramped up. More than 400 missiles and drones are now swarming Ukraine on an almost nightly basis with cruise and ballistic missiles getting through air defences in greater numbers because of a shortage of air defences – notably the US manufactured Patriot systems which are the most effective in downing Moscow’s most dangerous long range weapons.
On Saturday, the mayor of Kharkiv said citizens had faced the largest Russian bombardment of the city of the war, involving dozens of drones .
“Kharkiv is currently experiencing the most powerful attack since the start of the full-scale war,” Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram.
But Nato has recently announced an extra €20 billion in military aid. Germany has said it will soon send Ukraine long-range bombs capable of striking deep into Russia. The UK has added £350 million in funding for 100,000 new drones and already delivered 144,000 rounds of artillery ammunition this year.
Dutch defense minister Ruben Brekelmans said the Netherlands is giving €400 million euros including 100 naval vessels, including patrol boats, transport boats, interceptors, and special operations ships and more than 50 naval drones.
Norway is stumping up $700 million in “drone-aid” too.
This shift to drone warfare has allowed Ukraine to regain initiative to offset the sheer mass of old-school military might that Russia has brought to bear.
The “meat grinder” assaults by Russian infantry have almost stopped. Ukrainian officers told The Independent that Russian artillery bombardments have fallen away as drones have easily tracked and destroyed the big guns of the traditional battlefield.
And Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, in which Kyiv claimed to have destroyed or damaged a third of Russia’s strategic bombers along with some spy planes in a staggering long range long term operation that hit Russian airfields 5,000km apart, have greatly boosted morale.
Along with ongoing long-range assaults with drones on Moscow’s airports, its energy infrastructure, and commanders themselves, Ukraine has turned the tactics of hybrid warfare developed by Russia back on Putin.
It is unlikely Ukraine will turn Trump back to outright support for the embattled democracy – he has gone too far in his public support for Putin to make that a credible ambition. But there are signs that America won’t try to cripple Kyiv’s war efforts as it has threatened to do. No wonder Putin’s peeved.