Double Jeopardy

Putin and Zelenskyy are both now under pressure and that raises the risks

After years in which the Ukraine war had become a brutal stalemate, that’s changing. Vladimir Putin is under pressure from deep strikes against his economic infrastructure, his economic room for manoeuvre is narrowing and there is widespread speculation that after years in which hundreds of thousands were fed into the Donbas meatgrinder, he may need to order a large-scale mobilisation too.

But Volodymyr Zelenskyy is under strain too. Several weeks ago I wrote about ‘Putin’s Hot Summer’, the strains that Ukrainian strikes were causing both in Crimea as well as the Russian energy sector. It is now apparent, having wondered out loud whether these would bring Putin to negotiate or cause him to escalate, that the Russian president has chosen the latter course.

Zelenskyy announced his ‘40 Day Campaign’ of intensified strikes on 25^th June with the stated aim of getting Putin to enter peace talks. Having ended on 4^thAugust it’s now clear both that this has failed and that, facing a winter without the ability to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, some opposition is coalescing around Mykhailo Fedorov the defence minister he sacked, who is calling for new elections in Ukraine.

So, some of the certainties that seemed to mark this past three or so years, in which both sides battered on without apparent pressure to change course, are dissolving. I say this with the humility of someone who has before detected – or claimed to have! – signs that the conflict might be moving to an end game, only to see the war continue.

It’s not the first time that Zelenskyy tried to take the strategic initiative in August. Two years ago, he launched a ground attack into Russia, the Kursk offensive, that ultimately achieved little, while the elite brigades involved took significant casualties.

This time, with the 40 Day Campaign the emphasis was on large scale drone strikes, particularly against infrastructure targets, and Russian shipping in the Black Sea. It’s clear that striking Moscow, Petersburg, and energy plants deep in Russia has had impact, Putin acknowledging a few days ago, “of course, they do cause us harm, that’s obvious”, though insisting that was not “critical”.

We’ve also seen a campaign of strikes against Russian online trader Wildberries’ warehouses. While Ukraine argues a military motive for these, it’s self-evident that the billions of roubles-worth of lost goods have harmed the broader economy.

In response, Russia has upped its strikes on Ukrainian economic targets, and we see telltale indicators of escalation in their actions towards Europe. Whether it was explosive-laden drones at Leipzig airport, Geran one way ‘effectors’ flying into Polish airspace or an uncrewed sea vessel targeting Romania’s offshore gas installations there are now myriad signs of it.

There have also been threats to retaliate against western countries’ seizure of ‘dark fleet’ tankers. Given the Kremlin’s many previous warnings, mostly not followed by action, there are risks here of misperception and a crisis emerging suddenly between Russia and a Nato nation.

The UK and other Nato countries’ role in the Ukrainian supply chain for long range drones we can expect further Russian operations against Europe. So this is one clear sense in which the war is changing now: Ukraine’s increasing use of deep strikes is prompting Russian escalation.

Given the critical shortage of anti-ballistic missile interceptors we can also expect Ukraine’s campaign of hitting the plants where Russia’s long range strike weapons are made to continue. So far, it’s not delivered a marked effect – but of course you can argue the Kremlin might have been hitting them even harder if they hadn’t done it.

The only area where we’ve seen some element of de-escalation relates to shipping in the Black Sea, with the claims that US Vice President JD Vance has negotiated a truce in this regard. With reports of another Ukrainian strike on a Russian ship this week, the jury, as they say, is out on that one.

What we see then, even taking account of a possible truce in the Black Sea, is both Putin and Zelenskyy are under additional pressure.

Some of these forces, like Russia’s big state deficit, or the manpower shortages on both sides, are things we’ve known about for a long time but are just that much worse now. Others are new factors, like Ukraine’s deep strikes or the emergence of Fedorov as a challenger to Zelenskyy.

We’ve seen enough to know that both of these leaders are survivors, and while Putin’s approach is based far more on coercion, Zelenskyy can also be ruthless. They know that challenges to their rule in a time or war can be neutralised and indeed may allow them to consolidate their own power.

Even so, the coming months could be testing times for both of them – and for the European countries that Russia will attempt to coerce. Putin’s hot summer continues but we know now that he will escalate rather than seeking a truce, whatever the strains on his military and economy more widely.

As the winter chill bites then attention will move to Zelenskyy: was Fedorov’s move a miscalculation or something that speaks to a deeper yearning for change? Will energy shortages, exacerbated by Russian strikes, feed popular discontent?

There are a great many unknowns then. But going into this winter both leaders are under growing pressures, with the risk that they will gamble that escalation is preferable to capitulation.