TALLINN, Estonia (HRNW ) — Moscow’s barrage of missile strikes on cities all across Ukraine has elicited celebratory comments from Russian officials and pro-Kremlin pundits, who in recent weeks have actively criticized the Russian military for a series of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield.
Russian nationalist commentators and state media war correspondents lauded Monday’s attack as an appropriate, and long-awaited, response to a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive and a weekend attack on the bridge between Russia and Crimea, the prized Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed in 2014.
Many of them argued that Moscow should keep up the intensity of Monday’s strikes to win the war now. Some analysts suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin was becoming a hostage of his allies’ views on how the campaign in Ukraine should unfold.
“Putin’s initiative is weakening, and he is becoming more dependent on circumstances and those who are forging the’victory’ (in Ukraine) for him,” Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think tank, wrote in an online commentary Monday.
“The fear of defeat is so strong, especially for those who are now fully immersed in this military venture, that Putin’s indecisiveness, with his logic of’We have not started anything yet’ and’Restrained tactics have paid off’ has become a problem,” the analyst said.