‘Drone Swarms and Missile Blitz’: Putin Is Trying to Break Ukraine

Russia Doubles Down As Ukraine Makes Concessions – Russia is once again hitting Ukraine’s major cities, launching more than 1,390 drones and 94 missiles across the entire country in the last week alone.

Drone Swarms and Missile Blitz Hits Ukraine

The strikes resulted in the deaths of at least 30 civilians, according to Ukrainian officials, and wounded more than 160. The attacks caused notable damage in major urban centers, including in Kyiv and Odesa, sparking outrage across Western Europe and drawing criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump.

The bombardments are particularly interesting this time around given that they followed a phone call between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The call was touted as a positive step towards a 30-day ceasefire agreement, but just one week later, Moscow unleashed a swarm of 355 drones and multiple missiles in just one night – a move that was widely viewed as a deliberate escalation.

Trump Is Willing to ‘Hit’ Russia

While the U.S. president has been widely criticized for placing too much trust in the Russian president, Trump has made it clear that he is willing to hit Russia in more ways than one.

Over the weekend, the president lashed out at Putin in both a social media statement and during comments made to reporters at a New Jersey airport.

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Trump told reporters, adding that the Russian president was “absolutely crazy” and “killing a lot of people.”

In response to the strikes, President Trump said that he was “absolutely” considering new sanctions on Russia.

The Trump administration also quietly backed European leaders in lifting range restrictions on long-range weapons provided to Ukraine. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced in recent days that European leaders will allow Ukraine to use NATO-provided long-range weaponry to strike deeper into Russian territory.

Is Russia Playing the West?

The timing here is particularly interesting. Ukrainian sentiment toward negotiations appears to be shifting, and Russia is escalating.

Former Ukrainian military chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi recently told a forum in Kyiv that Ukrainians should now focus on fighting a “hi-tech war of survival” rather than attempting to reclaim lost territory. Zaluzhnyi also argued that Ukrainians should abandon hope of returning to its 1991 borders – something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long described as an achievable goal.

And while Ukraine has not yet made formal concessions, several Western sources have claimed that the country is now open to de facto land compromises, even if they remain officially unrecognized.

A recent Gallup poll supports the shit, too, with 51% of Ukrainians now willing to accept a negotiated end to the war over a total military victory, with a significant minority willing to accept territorial losses.

So, could this be Russia’s final push?

The Kremlin could at this point see an opportunity to negotiate from a position of strength while the West recalibrates and Ukraine lowers its expectations. The brutality of Russia’s latest strikes, however, raises a new question: is Putin’s assertiveness part of a calculated negotiation strategy or simply a gamble that could push the West, and President Trump, into re-engagement?

Curiously, after Trump’s tirade against Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov thanked him for his work on establishing new negotiations, in what appeared to be an effort to keep Trump on side.

Might Russia have simply gone too far this time?

About the Author:

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.

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