Russia has rapidly intensified its bombardment of Ukraine, launching one of its most brutal attacks since the war began nearly two years ago.
A total of 158 missiles and kamikaze drones were fired towards six cities over the weekend, reported The Times, with targets including a maternity hospital and a kindergarten. At least 4 civilians were killed and almost 100 injured, according to UN estimates. It was the largest missile attack of the war so far, said the head of the Ukrainian air force.
On Tuesday, Russia fired “a second massive barrage” on Kyiv, said the Financial Times. Ukraine has also “hit back”, said BBC News, with attacks on the Russian city of Belgorod that have left 25 dead. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia would “feel the wrath” of Ukraine’s military in 2024 in a New Year message.
Vladimir Putin is “buoyed by Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and flagging Western support”, said The New York Times (NYT) two weeks ago. But “in a recent push of back-channel diplomacy”, the Russian leader “has been sending a different message”, said the paper. “He is ready to make a deal.”
Putin has been “signalling” that he is “open to a ceasefire that freezes the fighting along the current lines”, two former senior Russian officials told the NYT: “far short of his ambitions to dominate Ukraine“.
What the papers said
“Russia has stockpiled missiles for a winter campaign designed to sap the morale of Ukrainians”, said The Times‘s defence correspondent George Grylls in Kyiv. This makes it “obvious” that Russia will continue attacking, Ukraine’s defence minister told the paper.
But domestic support for the invasion seems to be ebbing. About half of Russians want the war to end in 2024, according to a poll by Russian Field published on Friday. The number of Russians who fully support the war has almost halved since February last year, independent polling organisation Chronicle found.
The survey, published in December, “revealed that those who favour peace far outnumber pro-war voices”, said Euronews. This is despite the “notoriously difficult” nature of polling in authoritarian states, especially as Moscow has “criminalised criticism of the war and spends millions on pro-war propaganda”. An independent Russian polling company Levada found in November that the majority of Russians would support peace talks.
The Kremlin is “likely concerned” about the impact of public opinion on Russia’s 2024 presidential election, according to an analysis of Chronicle’s findings by US think tank The Institute for the Study of War. Dissent is growing over mass conscription and poor medical care for soldiers. According to recent US intelligence estimates, Russia has lost “nearly 90%” of the personnel it had when the conflict began, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, a grassroots movement has been “gaining momentum” recently, said The Guardian: wives and mothers of some of the 300,000 Russians conscripted in September 2022, an event which triggered a “wave of anxiety and unrest” – and the biggest fall in Putin’s ratings since he came to power in 1999. The Russian leader is known to care deeply about such metrics.
Many are “staging public protests”, said the paper, calling for “total demobilisation” of civilian fighters. During the first Chechen war in 1994, a similar anti-war movement of wives and mothers “helped turn public opinion against the conflict and played a role in the Kremlin’s decision to stop the fighting”.
At the moment, Putin “sees a confluence of factors creating an opportune moment” for a ceasefire, officials told the NYT: a stalemate on the battlefield; Ukraine’s stalled counteroffensive; its “flagging support in the West”; and the “distraction” of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Although the Kremlin “needs a ceasefire”, it is “determined to achieve this on favourable terms”, wrote Pavel Luzin, senior fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), in November. These include keeping control over all disputed Ukrainian territory.
However, there is “no evidence” that Ukraine’s leaders – who have vowed to retake their territory – would accept such a deal, said the NYT.
Ukraine has been “rallying support for its own peace formula”, said the paper, which would require Moscow to surrender captured territory and pay damages. Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that he saw no sign that Russia was willing to negotiate. “We just see brazen willingness to kill,” he said.
What next?
Some argue that Putin “wants to delay any negotiation until a possible return to office by former president Donald J Trump”, said the NYT. But others say the “ideal timing” of any ceasefire would be before Russia’s presidential election in March.
Nevertheless, wrote Luzin, “as during the initial phase of Russia’s war of aggression from 2014-2022, there is no doubt that Russia would continue to strike Ukraine even after a ceasefire”.
Russian leader ‘ready to make a deal’ amid growing opposition to war but ‘no evidence’ that Kyiv would cede territory
