This past week was marked by further military escalation. The U.S. greenlit Ukraine’s use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles and British Storm Shadow missiles on targets inside Russia. Ukraine subsequently struck military installations in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk regions with Western-made missiles for the first time. Ukraine also used home-made drones in its attack Wednesday on an ammunition depot in Russia’s Novgorod region identified as the 13th arsenal of the Defense Ministry’s Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU).
Russia continued to strike Ukrainian cities and towns far behind the front lines with missiles and drones, causing civilian casualties. A Russian ballistic missile hit a residential building in Sumy on Sunday evening, killing 12 people, including two children. A missile attack on Odesa on Monday killed 10. Twelve people including a seven-year-old child were killed in an overnight Russian drone attack on the town of Hlukhiv in Sumy region on Monday evening. A Russian attack on Kharkiv on Tuesday injured 12 people. A missile strike on Kryvyi Rih on Thursday injured at least 31, including two teenagers.
Russia likely launched an RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile on the city of Dnipro, marking the first use of such weapons in the war against Ukraine. In a televised address on Thursday, Putin said Russia had launched an Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile at a defense enterprise in Dnipro.
Putin constantly shifting “red lines” in Ukraine as he issues threats against the West, ISW says. Putin’s November 21 statement demonstrates that Moscow’s constant saber-rattling largely remains rhetorical, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a report on Thursday. The Kremlin’s threats of retaliation hardly ever materialized as it kept moving the goalposts.
Putin’s recent threats against the West have centered on Western states allowing Ukraine to conduct long-range strikes into “Russian territory,” but Ukrainian forces have been striking what the Kremlin illegally defines as “Russian territory” for a long time. The Kremlin has illegally defined occupied Crimea as part of Russia since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Ukrainian forces have routinely struck Crimea with US-provided ATACMS and UK-provided Storm Shadow missiles since April 2023.
The Kremlin’s application of its “red lines” rhetoric has been wildly inconsistent, undermining the overall Russian escalation narrative. Putin previously threatened severe retaliation if Western states provided Ukraine with rocket artillery, tanks, warplanes, and the ability to strike into Russia, and Putin has constantly shifted the goalposts every time the West has called Putin’s bluff, ISW said.