Ukraine continues to cross Russia’s red lines: Putin remains passive

Ukrainian Resistance Russian invasion President Vladimir Putin’s red lines continue to be crossed. Power crisis Kyiv In KurskIn western Russia, the bloc this month crossed the hardest line of all – a direct ground attack on Russia – but the Kremlin leader’s response so far has been surprisingly passive and subdued, a stark contrast to his rhetoric at the start of the war.

On the first day of the invasion, in February 2022, Putin warned that any country that stands in its way Russia There will be consequences “like you have never seen in your entire history”, a threat aimed at countries that might supply arms to Ukraine.

If Russia’s territorial integrity was threatened, “we will certainly use all our means to defend Russia and our people.” Months later he assured that “this is no bluff.”

“citizen of Russia You can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our freedom and our independence will be guaranteed – I stress this again – with all the means at our disposal,” making an apparent reference to Russian nuclear weapons.

But the shock of Ukraine for Russian security in the first foreign invasion since World War II exposed the military flaws of the Russia and clearly highlighted misleading red lines moscow,

Now some are again questioning the focus of the strategy Washington For Ukraine: Slow and calibrated supply of arms to prevent escalation of tensions Russia which, according to critics, has destroyed the prospects of Kyiv A war broke out to drive out the invaders in which a large number of people suffered casualties.

He said the Ukrainian attack on Kursk shows the Russians are cheating oleksandr danilyukFormer Ukrainian intelligence and defense official, now an associate member Royal United Services Institutea think tank London. He said, “Eliminate all voices of pseudo-experts… who are against escalation.”

The attack was “risky,” he continued, “but it sent a very powerful signal and helped us change the narrative about Ukraine — which is not capable of winning — and about Russian red lines. “Both narratives have been destroyed.”

attacks of Ukraine Has repeatedly crossed manifest red lines: the sinking of the Russian flagship Black SeaHe moscowto blow off; Crimean Bridge in 2022; attacks with Storm Shadow Missiles against the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol; drone attacks against the Kremlin and Moscow in 2023; assassinations of propagandists on Russian territory; and attacks on strategic air bases hundreds of kilometers away Ukraine,

Western weapons used by the Ukrainian military, HIMARSTank, ATACMS And F-16There were red lines in his time too.

The analyst then wrote that Putin downplayed the problem when Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow in May 2023, hitting the Kremlin dome and shutting down key airports. Tatiana Stanovaya In an analysis for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,

“Within a few months, it began to look like the red lines The Kremlin “Either they never existed or they have become highly dynamic.” The Kremlin claimed to be unfazed, he wrote, “even if that goes against common sense.”

This was going to become a striking pattern, but the policy of military aid Ukraine under the leadership of USA According to many analysts, the threat remains.

boris bondareva former Russian diplomat based in Geneva who resigned in 2022 in protest against the war, said in an interview that he is afraid of Washington to initiate a direct military conflict with Russia That would have crippled the U.S. response, left its objectives in the war unclear, and presented American weakness to Putin and other global adversaries.

He said, “When you put your enemy’s red lines as a key factor in your strategy, you will always be on the losing side.”

President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyused Tuesday’s raid on Kursk to argue against sanctions Washington who prevents Kyiv Use Western weapons to strike deeper into Russia against military targets, such as the air bases that Russia uses for its devastating glide bomb attacks.

“We are witnessing an important ideological change: the naive and misleading concept of the so-called red lines Russia“The narrative that dominated the assessment of the war by some partners has collapsed these days,” Zelensky said.

Ukrainian infiltration, however, Kursk While the calculation has changed, it has not altered the basic balance of the war, in which Moscow remains focused on eastern Ukraine, closing in on the city Pokrovskin the area of donetska key logistics hub that could pave the way for further Russian advances if it fell.

Yes Washington allowed Ukraine Attacking military targets inside Russia with American weapons, that would be another taboo, but sergey markovA pro-Kremlin analyst suggested Moscow had already taken this into account.

“There is no doubt in Russia that this will be allowed. Russia already believes that this decision has been made by the United States,” he said.

“Russia clearly tried to draw these red lines, but the United States, which is participating in the conflict, decided that ‘we will not cross the big red lines, but only the small ones,'” he said.

He concluded, “They decided that we would cut these red lines into dozens of small, thin red threads, to cross them little by little, so that there would be no major incident that could “cause war”.

A Russian academic with close ties to senior diplomats moscow He said Russian leaders were taking the use of American and Western weapons in Russia “very seriously” but it was unclear whether any decisions had been made on how to respond. He spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the deliberations in Moscow.

Russian officials have sought to downplay the significance of the Ukrainian incursion and the failure of its military leadership.

Markov said the presence of Ukrainian troops in 15 to 20 “little-known” villages in the Kursk region was of “little significance” compared with Russian advances in Donetsk. But if Ukraine captured the entire Glushkovsky district of Kursk or took the regional capital, the city of Kursk, “it would be a huge loss” that could force Putin to change his approach, he said.

Washington Post