Putin Has Brought the War Home to Russia
Paul Craig Roberts
Some years ago Putin declared that “Russia will never fight again on her own territory.” Putin has been fighting a war on Russian territory for 5 yrars.
Why does Russia tolerate a president and a political party who intentionally deny Russia victory, instead spreading the hardship of war over the country and enabling a minor conflict to develop into a war with the West?
As I predicted, Putin’s ever-widening war continues to widen while Putin continues to pretend that he is only fighting a limited engagement in Donbas..
The New York Times reports that
“Ukraine struck Moscow yesterday with a furious drone attack that appeared to be the largest of its kind in the more than four years since the war began. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was clear about its intent. “If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well,” he said. The strikes destroyed an oil refinery, filling the skies with greasy, toxic smoke. They shuttered four airports. They closed down part of the highway that rings the city, which is home to 13 million people.
“The objective, my colleagues Paul Sonne and Nataliya Vasilyeva said, was to bring the war home for Russians who live far from the front lines of eastern Ukraine. The attack “seemed likely to feed fears among Russians that the Kremlin’s ability to isolate society from the impacts of the war was sharply eroding,” they wrote.
“The effects are mounting. Ukrainian drone attacks on other refineries have led to lines and rationing at gas stations across Russia. The war has started to take its toll on the Russian economy, too. It has now run longer than World War I.
“Russia is pounding Ukraine as well. Earlier this week it bombarded Kyiv, the capital, leaving a historic cathedral at one of Ukraine’s holiest sites in flames, killing five people and injuring 35 others.
“But the attack on Moscow has made Russian hard-liners apoplectic. They want the Kremlin to deploy the full might of Russia’s military to stop Ukraine from continuing its attacks within the country. “We must strike the enemy mercilessly, without hesitation,” one told the Russian news outlet RTVI. He called on Moscow to “eliminate the entire leadership, destroy all command centers, bring the entire industrial sector to its knees.”
“Which is a good reminder that this war is far from over, and could get much worse. Paul and Nataliya wrote a terrifying sentence about that: “How much further Russia, which has the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, can go with its conventional arsenal is unclear.”
Ukraine Bombards Moscow With One of the Biggest Drone Attacks of the War
The attack, which shut down the capital’s airports for several hours, was part of an escalating campaign to bring the conflict home to Russians.
Pucilanimous Putin is leading the world into Armageddon.