Russia wants to break Ukraine's resistance by attacking its electricity infrastructure, as it has been unable to achieve success on the battlefield. With Donald Trump having imposed new sanctions on its oil sector, security expert Rainer Saks believes Russia's situation could deteriorate significantly in the near future.
Russia is still trying to achieve success on the battlefield in Ukraine, primarily in Donetsk Oblast in the area around Pokrovsk. However, no significant progress has been observed. At the same time, over the past week, the Russians have changed their tactics and are now increasingly attacking Ukraine's electricity supply system, ranging from production facilities to distribution networks.
"Russia has actually realized it will not achieve rapid military success through combat operations alone," said Gert Kaju, head of the Ministry of Defense's readiness department on Friday.
Kaju emphasized that Russia is trying to break Ukrainian society's will to resist. "It is trying to achieve this by destroying the electricity infrastructure ahead of the winter. Russia's hope is that Ukraine will break elsewhere, if not on the front lines," he explained.
"We had a bad start to the year and are still in a bad situation. At the same time, we are in a stronger diplomatic position, but only because we have not broken and have managed to thwart the Russians' military plans," said Dmitro Žmailo, executive director of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center.
However, Russia continues to work on other fronts. This week, U.S. President Donald Trump canceled a planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which had been earmarked for Budapest. According to Kaju, at the time when the news of the cancellation broke, Russia launched a nuclear exercise, showing that it has no intention of conducting peace talks and is simply trying to buy more time.
"It would have been particularly strange if Russia had conducted nuclear triad exercises while high-level peace talks were taking place," Kaju pointed out.
According to security expert Rainer Saksa, the proposed peace talks were a tactical move by Russia, as they believed that Ukraine might receive Tomahawk long-range missiles from the U.S. However, another diplomatic game with Trump has backfired on the Russians in a sense, as new sanctions were imposed quickly afterwards.
"The U.S. imposed new sanctions on Russia, Rosneft and Lukoil, which came as a bolt from the blue for Russia, and with that, President Trump once again proved to Russia that he can make all kinds of decisions," said Saks.
Trump could have imposed even stronger sanctions, However, according to Saks, what cannot be underestimated is that the Americans have targeted the sector, which is most sensitive for Russia. The impact of the sanctions will be felt in the longer term and that could become significant next year when Russia aims to tighten its military budget slightly.
"This does not necessarily mean that there are plans to end the war, but it is clear that Russia is already running out of resources, and now, when this is compounded and added to Ukraine's attacks deep inside Russia on oil refineries, which Ukrainian weapons had not been able to reach until now - things could still end quite badly for Russia," said Saks.