The War in Ukraine Arrives at a Crucial Juncture

Though relegated to the sidelines thanks to President Donald Trump’s decision to launch an illegal and unjustified war on Iran at the behest of the Israeli warfare state, the war in Ukraine grows more dangerous with each passing day. In fact, recent reports indicate a perilous increase in attacks on energy and civilian infrastructure from both Moscow and Kiev.

On June 17, Kiev launched the largest aerial attack of the war on Moscow with an estimated 550 drones and missiles. One attack resulted in the spectacular explosion at the Kapotnya refinery southeast of Moscow. It was the third time in a month that the refinery had been targeted by Kiev. Whether the explosion was caused by a Russian MANPAD defending Moscow or by a direct hit from a Ukrainian drone remains unclear. Shortly after the attack, a Ukrainian commander sent a message to the Russian people: “This war has now reached your homes as well. We hope that message helps Russia bring this war to an end.”

Only days later, on June 20, another attack struck the Antipinsky oil refinery in Tyumen in Western Siberia, some 1,200 miles from Ukraine. That same evening, Ukraine struck the oil terminal at Kerch in Crimea. A week later, Ukraine hit Russian refineries in the Krasnodar and Yaroslavl regions.

In response, Russian forces have struck both Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia, killing numerous civilians. For his part, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, noted that “strikes on our infrastructure, wherever they are directed, have absolutely no effect on the situation at the front, on the line of contact.”

For Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, there would seem to be a number of motives at play — none of which portend an end to the conflict, now in its fifth year. For one thing, Zelensky has seen a dip in the robust support he once had from Washington under Trump II. He seems convinced that such shows of force will shore up what remains of his support among Democratic war hawks, as well as among his European collaborators such as the German Chancellor Frederich Merz and the now-departing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Yet Zelensky’s stepped-up drone war, far from being, as some US analysts suggest, a show of strength, may be the beginning of the end for the budding despot, the desperate last gasp of a wartime leader with an economy in ruins, a shrinking population, and a generation of young men irretrievably lost. Putting Zelensky’s drone war into proper perspective may require recalling how ultimately ineffective the flurry of Nazi Germany’s V2 missile attacks on London and the Japanese Kamikaze attacks on the US Navy were during the final year of the Second World War.

The mood among ‘official’ Moscow has, as might be expected in light of these developments, grown darker than usual. In addition to the unprecedented drone attacks on Moscow, Russia has suffered an estimated 1.2 million war casualties, including approximately 325,000 dead. And while there are growing signs of war weariness and disgust with Putin’s regime among pro-Western elements in Moscow and St. Petersburg, there are voices close to the Kremlin that are, in a manner not terribly dissimilar to our own neoconservatives whenever Israel attacked, baying for blood.

Sergei Karaganov, an academic who heads the Kremlin’s Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, has repeatedly called for Russia to strike Europe with nuclear weapons in order to “restore deterrence.” For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promised that Russia would retaliate for the refinery attack on a “mass scale.” Lavrov also warned that the current “state of affairs poses serious threats to global security. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could rapidly escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, with catastrophic consequences.” Lavrov’s comments were originally meant for publication in POLITICO Europe, but the outlet, owned by the shamelessly pro-war Axel Springer group, pulled the piece at the last minute. Heaven forbid we hear from the “enemy” directly.

That said, with Donald Trump distracted by more pressing matters of state such as the deteriorating condition of the Reflecting Pool and his duties as host of the Great American State Fair (his promise to end this war now, as with so many other promises, forgotten) few, if any, remaining world leaders outside of Pope Leo XIV have called for a cessation of hostilities in between Russia and Ukraine and her sponsors in Washington and Brussels.

With Moscow married to its narrative, and Kiev married to its, now would seem the time for diplomacy – to assist Moscow and Kiev seek, as Kissinger once put it, a “common interest for different purposes.” Yet the war drags on. And its potential to suck both Europe and the United States into a far more disastrous conflagration grows as both parties to the conflict become increasingly desperate for a breakthrough.

James W. Carden is the author of The Great Betrayal: How the Democrats Became the Party of War. He is the editor of The Realist Review and a contributing editor at The Nation.

James W. Carden is the editor of The Realist Review.  He is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.