Analysis-Russian hawks urge Putin to escalate war, drop US talks as Ukraine strikes deep

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) – Russian conservatives, outraged over Ukrainian drone strikes and angered by the United States’ failed promise to end the war on favorable terms, are calling on President Vladimir Putin to abandon diplomacy and escalate tensions.

Calls for tougher measures are not new. Nationalist voices have long been pushing for full mobilization, the destruction of the government building in Kiev, the assassination of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and attacks on drone factories in Europe. Some hawks even urged the Kremlin chief to consider using tactical nuclear weapons.

However, this month Ukraine will visit Moscow, St. Deep attacks targeting St. Petersburg and Crimea, as well as what Russia describes as two deadly attacks on passenger buses, have sharpened and intensified these demands.

Analysts say the increasingly harsh rhetoric reflects Ukraine’s growing unease about the range and impact of drone strikes and a broader debate about how Russia, with its vast territory, can defend itself while pursuing its war aims in a conflict it launches in 2022.

“What else needs to happen before we actually start fighting? War means victory at all costs. Ukrainians are at war, so they’re fighting with everything they’ve got,” said Konstantin Malofeyev, a nationalist businessman, after last week’s Ukrainian attack that set fire to an oil refinery in Moscow.

“Why don’t we use the nuclear weapons developed by our ancestors and stocked with all their might by the nation for this very purpose?” he asked.

CALL TO ABANDON PEACE TALK

Some nationalist commentators have called on Moscow to adopt what they see as Iran’s effective military and diplomatic tactics against the United States. The Obsessed by War blog, which has more than 650,000 followers, called for Ukraine’s major cities to be made uninhabitable through bombing. Others say it is time to abandon the US-brokered peace talks and completely destroy the Ukrainian state.

“It would have been impossible for the (Ukrainian) junta to launch systematic air strikes on Moscow without Washington’s permission. So why did Trump give Zelenskiy such a green light? The answer is very simple; Iran had caught up with Trump and had to sign a humiliating agreement,” said Yuri Baranchik, a nationalist blogger with nearly 90,000 followers.

“Now he needs to take it out on someone as soon as possible… So we have no choice; either we will defeat Trump, or he will defeat us,” Baranchik said on Telegram.

Sources close to the Kremlin say Putin can tolerate such rhetoric. He sits at the top of the tightly controlled political system he has created for 26 years, and nationalist bloggers must follow certain rules.

But analysts say that while Moscow still wants to keep the door open for a potential diplomatic solution, such statements could still complicate decision-making by inflaming public sentiment and raising expectations of broader military action.

KREMLIN RESISTS HARD PRESSURE

The Kremlin has so far resisted calls from hawks to abandon talks, although three senior government officials said this week that talks with the United States were going nowhere and accused Washington of failing to follow through on peace overtures made at last year’s Putin-Trump summit in Alaska.

Although the Defense Ministry in April published the addresses of factories in several European countries that it claimed were producing drones for Ukraine as a warning that those factories could be targeted, Putin has also refrained from supporting the nationalists’ most extreme proposals.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also signaled last month that Moscow would escalate tensions, saying it intended to launch “systematic attacks” on military targets in Kiev. Heavier bombings followed, including the damage to a 1,000-year-old monastery in Kiev.

For now, Putin seems confident in the current strategy. Russia is close to seizing the city of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine as part of an effort to control the Donbas region, he told military academy graduates on Tuesday.

He also said that political forces in Europe hostile to Russia were likely to be overshadowed by rivals he described as more reasonable.

“Those who want to restore normal relations with us and stop this endless effort towards Russia’s strategic defeat are on the rise,” Putin said. “Everything will be okay eventually.”

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn, Editing by Ros Russell)