A resident on Friday stands on a balcony of his apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, that was damaged during Russian drone strike.Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters
To get a sense of how Vladimir Putin feels about recent world events, you needed to spend Thursday night in Ukraine.
Barely 24 hours after U.S. forces boarded a Russian-flagged tanker carrying Venezuelan oil – and on the same night protesters in Tehran were rising up against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime – Mr. Putin let loose his fury on Ukraine.
It was a long and punishing night in Kyiv, which bore the brunt of an overnight attack involving 278 drones and missiles, as well as in the western Lviv region, which was targeted by a rarely used nuclear-capable missile known as Oreshnik.
Russia fired a powerful hypersonic missile overnight at a target in Ukraine near the border with NATO-member Poland, in what Kyiv's European allies described as an attempt to intimidate them from supporting Ukraine. Fiona Jones reports.
Reuters
Russia has been taking a beating recently on the geopolitical chessboard. Thursday night’s attack, and specifically the use of an Oreshnik – which Ukrainian officials say carried only inert or “dummy” warheads this time – was a warning that Moscow can still upset the table.
The first blow the Kremlin had to absorb was the surprise U.S. raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3. Mr. Maduro, a long-time ally who stood alongside Mr. Putin at last year’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, is now in custody in New York, awaiting trial on “narcoterrorism” and other charges. U.S. President Donald Trump has declared that his administration will now control – and U.S. companies will profit from – the sale of Venezuela’s oil production.
In addition to seeing a friendly regime decapitated, Russia looked powerless to do anything about it. Venezuela’s Russian-made S-300 air-defence systems appear to have been quickly overwhelmed by U.S. air power, and the Russian-flagged tanker, the Marinera, was boarded on Wednesday despite the nearby presence of a Russian submarine.
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Meanwhile, the protests rocking Tehran are threatening to topple the Islamic Republic, a potential development that would cross another name off Mr. Putin’s dwindling list of friends.
The explosive drones that terrorized Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Thursday night are now produced mostly inside Russia, but are still referred to as “Shaheds” by most Ukrainians. It’s a bitter nod to the fact the unmanned aerial vehicles were originally designed in Iran and then exported to Russia in large numbers starting in 2022, after Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began.
The aftermath of a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on Friday.Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters
Ukraine remains one of the few places where Russia can flex what remains of its military might and send a message back to Mr. Trump in the process.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Russia had launched 242 drones, 22 cruise missiles, and 13 ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, plus the Oreshnik that struck near Lviv. Four people were killed in Kyiv, he said, and 20 apartment buildings were damaged, as was the Qatari Embassy.
Mr. Zelensky said the main Russian target was again the country’s energy and heating infrastructure, ahead of a weekend when temperatures in the capital are forecast to dip as low as -17 Celsius.
“The attack took place exactly when there was a significant cold spell. Aimed precisely against the normal life of ordinary people,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on social media. “Right now, everything possible is being done to restore heating and electricity supply for the people.”
The attack also highlighted how, despite months of U.S.-led peace negotiations, Russia has yet to budge from its hardline demands for ending the war in Ukraine. Mr. Putin has said the invasion will end only when Ukraine formally cedes the southeastern Donbas region to Russia, forswears joining the NATO alliance and accepts limitations on the size of its military, in addition to other demands. Mr. Zelensky has said he is ready to make peace, but not on terms that compromise Ukraine’s sovereignty.
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The use of the Oreshnik was a reminder that Mr. Putin can still unleash even worse on Ukraine than he has so far over almost four years of war. The hypersonic missile sped some 1,900 kilometres from its launch pad in the southern Russian region of Astrakhan to Lviv in less than 13 minutes, arriving so fast that it went undetected by Ukraine’s radar systems.
Video of the attack posted online by Ukrainian officials showed what appeared to be five or six streaks light up the night sky near Lviv, followed by a series of small explosions. The Oreshnik can carry up to six warheads at a time.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the use of a nuclear-capable weapon so close to the frontiers of the EU and NATO – Lviv is just 65 km from the Polish border – showed again that Mr. Putin wasn’t interested in peace.
Rescuers work at the site of the apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on Friday.Stringer/Reuters
“Russia’s reported use of an Oreshnik missile is a clear escalation against Ukraine and meant as a warning to Europe and to the U.S.,” Ms. Kallas wrote on social media.
But European leaders have recently been forced to devote nearly as much time to worrying about the U.S. threat to Europe – specifically Mr. Trump’s threat to annex Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, an EU member and NATO ally – as the danger posed by Russia. There’s growing concern that the EU could find itself squeezed between two authoritarian and belligerent powers.
“We are living in a world of great powers with a real temptation to divide up the world,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech on Friday to his country’s ambassadors.
Mr. Macron was speaking a day after The New York Times published an interview with Mr. Trump in which the U.S. President said “I don’t need international law” and that his actions were restrained only by his “own morality.”
Mr. Putin’s attack on Ukraine a few hours later was a reminder that the Kremlin boss hasn’t been restrained by international law for a very long time.