An expert has revealed why they think Russian President Vladimir Putin waited to make a major response to Ukraine’s incursion into his territory.
Speaking before a barrage of missile attacks on Ukraine this morning, CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier said: “It is kind of remarkable that the Russian response has been so paltry that not only are they not pushing the Ukrainians out but they can’t seem to stop their advances.”
But this morning, Putin’s Russia unleashed a salvo of missile strikes on Ukraine. The besieged country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over 100 missiles and around 100 drones had been used. Russia used cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic Kinzhal missiles to pummel the wartorn nation.
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(Image: Global Images Ukraine via Getty)
A total of 15 Ukrainian regions including the capital of Kyiv have been targeted. Mr Zelenskyy said there had been damage to the “energy sector”.
Blackouts and damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were reported across the country, from the region of Sumy in the east, to the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions in the south, to the region of Rivne in the west.
Before the strikes, Ms Dozier said the relative quiet had her “curious”. She likened the war between Ukraine and Russia to a “chess match… where one opponent does something and then the other responds.”
(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Bad Vlad had previously promised a “worthy response” to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk. Three weeks after it began, Ukraine controls around 62 square miles and 121,000 residents have been evacuated.
Sky News reports said any potential talks for a ceasefire had “lost its relevance” and warned of a further response to the Kursk incursion.
Ms Dozier said: “The Russians are often very slow to respond on the battlefield, but it has me wondering if Putin has looked at this situation and said Kursk could be the thing to use to motivate the Russian population in that when you talk to a number of Russian specialists in the US government, they say ‘Putin hasn’t been serious about winning the Ukrainian war, if he were serious, he would mobilise his entire population, he would draft more soldiers to make up for his losses on the battlefield’.
(Image: CNN)
“He hasn’t done that. Well, he probably hasn’t done that because popular opinion would rise up against him unless Russians felt endangered… The Kursk [situation] is making them feel very threatened.”
At least three people were reportedly killed in the strike by Russia this morning, which appeared to target energy infrastructure. Mr Zelenskyy called on Ukraine’s allies to provide Kyiv with long-range weapons and permission to use them on targets inside Russia.
“In order to stop the barbaric shelling of Ukrainian cities, it is necessary to destroy the place from which the Russian missiles are launched,” he said. “We count on the support of our allies and will definitely make Russia pay.”
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