Taking cover when the air raid sirens sound: hardly anyone in Kyiv has done it in recent months. Rockets almost never hit, certainly not in the center. But on Monday afternoon, people again ran into bomb shelters. The heaviest Russian airstrikes since the start of the war have brought fear back to Ukraine in places far from the front.
For hours, Russia fired long-range missiles and combat drones at Ukraine. They exploded in eight provinces across the country, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the east. Among the hit areas: a playground in the center of Kyiv, a residential area in Dnipro, an electricity supply in Kremenchuk. Shards, pools of blood, corpses lay in streets deep in Ukraine. At least eleven civilians were killed.
The rocket shower is President Putin’s response to Saturday’s attack on the Crimean Bridge. “Leaving such a crime unpunished is simply impossible,” Putin said during an emergency session of the Russian Security Council on Monday. He accused the Ukrainian security services of the explosions on the bridge, which connects Russia to the annexed Crimea and therefore has a deeply symbolic meaning for Putin.
The Kremlin tells the Russian population that the missiles were aimed exclusively at military targets. All of them have been hit with precision bombing, the Russian Defense Ministry exulted, which distributed videos of launches in the Black Sea.
But images of the impacts make it clear that Putin took revenge on Ukrainian civilians. Rockets hit busy intersections, parks and office buildings during the morning rush hour. A city bus carrying commuters was hit outside Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv. In Zaporizhzhya, a kindergarten classroom was reduced to ashes.
Chosen to do damage
The Russian attack had two targets, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: civilians and energy supplies. “They want panic and chaos,” Zelensky said in a video message he recorded on the street in Kyiv while Russian missiles were still flying over Ukraine. “The time and targets were specifically chosen to do as much damage as possible.”
The damage to utilities is significant. Governors of four provinces reported large-scale outages of water and electricity supplies. The government called on the entire population to limit power consumption due to network overload. Repair work started quickly. Most of the damage was repaired on Tuesday, according to the government.
The missiles sowed fear far beyond the front line. Kyiv’s metro stops turned into collective bomb shelters, as they did during the first weeks of the invasion. Some people decided to flee: Ukrainian Railways announced an additional evacuation train from hard-hit Zaporizhzhya heading west.
There doesn’t seem to be any panic or chaos. No refugee queues to the west, no long lines for shops to stock food for in air raid shelters. Unlike February, few residents of Kyiv and other cities now fear that their hometowns will be occupied by Russia.
Emergency session of the G7
While it is not yet entirely clear what the repercussions of the attacks on the infrastructure will be, military analysts do not expect major changes on the battlefield. Russia is still losing ground there. Only in the Donetsk province did the Russian army make any territorial gains in recent days.
The attacks reinforce Zelensky’s call for Western air defense systems. Immediately after the missile strikes, Zelensky telephoned French President Macron, British Prime Minister Truss, German Chancellor Scholz and Prime Minister Rutte, among others. The G7 (Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, UK, US and EU) scheduled an emergency meeting for Tuesday with Zelensky as the main guest. Later in the week, NATO will meet on arms aid to Ukraine.
Applause for Putin’s revenge action is limited to Russian hardliners and state television propagandists. “Now I am one hundred percent satisfied with the execution of the special military operation,” said Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who previously criticized the Russian army. Margarita Simonjan, editor-in-chief of Kremlin transmitter RT (formerly Russia Today), also expressed satisfaction on Twitter about the revenge action: ‘Here you have an answer. The Krimbrug has been a red line from the start.’
The hardliners pressure Putin to go further and further. After the mounting defeats and humiliations, they are publicly calling for massive rocket attacks and the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “If Putin hesitates, he could cause deep irritation to those who have now joined a war that must end in victory,” Kremlin expert Tatiana Stanovaja said on Monday. “But the further he goes, the worse it gets. There’s no turning back.’