First came a ballistic missile strike on Kyiv early this month that killed 24 people, including three children. Then, on Sunday, Russia launched one of the heaviest missile and drone attacks of the war against the city, Ukraine’s capital. Moscow followed that with threats of further “sustained strikes” on Kyiv, including at “decision-making centers,” and urged diplomats and other foreigners to leave.
Russia has ample reasons to be in a belligerent mood. The Kremlin, analysts said, is seeking to show strength and a capacity for escalation as it is locked in stalemates both on the front lines and at the bargaining table.
The warnings of continued strikes on Kyiv followed a consistent theme for Russia: that its military has yet to unleash its full might but is prepared to do so if it feels provoked by Ukraine, the much smaller country it invaded and continues to assault each day.
This week, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the country’s patience had finally been “exhausted.” The cause of its fury, Russia said, was a Ukrainian drone strike late last week on a college dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine. Russia said that 21 students had died in the strike, which it called deliberate. The Ukrainian government called the assertion misinformation, but a Ukrainian media outlet identified civilian victims, including students.
The Kremlin has seized on the strike just as it has lost momentum in the war. The proliferation of drone technology has made movement on the battlefield increasingly slow and costly. While May has typically been the time when Russia has launched a major offensive, this month its advances have been microscopic. Russia is on pace to have its worst month of territorial gains in over a year, according to DeepState, a Ukrainian group that tracks the front lines.
This slowdown has raised questions about whether Russia, despite its threats, has already done as much as it can do with conventional weapons.
“That military advantage that Russia had been maintaining for the last couple of years, probably, is starting to gradually minimize,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “And in this regard, a discourse arises: Isn’t it time for us to raise the level of escalation?”
The goal for nuclear-armed Russia, she added, is to “create psychological pressure on the entire elite, on society” in Ukraine.
Moscow has also felt pressure as the Trump administration, preoccupied with its war in Iran, has lost interest in mediating the conflict in Ukraine, a diplomatic process that at times favored Russia and that went into a deep freeze in late February. Moscow’s threats of attacks on Kyiv, analysts said, were in part a warning about how far Russia could go if the United States did not re-engage.
Among the Russian people, the stalled diplomacy and minimal frontline gains have added up to fatigue over what is increasingly seen as a fruitless conflict with no end in sight.
On the Ukrainian side, where threats of escalation by Russia have become familiar, the mood has remained defiant, just as Ukraine’s position in the war has strengthened in recent weeks.
In Kyiv, the warnings were widely interpreted as scare tactics aimed at regaining the attention of a world distracted by war in the Middle East. A conference of dozens of European officials went on as planned on Tuesday, even as Russian threats continued. Cafes reopened after being damaged in Sunday’s strikes, which killed three people and engulfed neighborhoods in smoke and debris. Residents helped board up one another’s windows.
A Ukrainian lawmaker, Kira Rudik, wrote on X: “Russia wants to break our spirits. They will fail.”
European countries rallied around Ukraine. Several, including Poland and Germany, summoned Russian diplomats over the threats against foreigners. European officials insisted they would stay put in Kyiv.
“Russia wants fear. Panic. Isolation of Ukraine. It will not work,” Katarina Mathernova, the European Union’s ambassador to Kyiv, wrote on Facebook. She added: “Threats against diplomats and international organizations are not a sign of strength. They are a sign of desperation.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has demonstrated new confidence as the country’s military has repeatedly struck Russia’s oil infrastructure and held its forces at bay on the front lines.
Mr. Zelensky won points with the Ukrainian public when the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, appealed to Ukraine for a cease-fire during the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow. The Ukrainian leader mocked Mr. Putin by signing an official decree saying Kyiv would “permit” him to host the parade.
Another bright spot for Mr. Zelensky was the electoral ouster of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Russia-friendly prime minister, who had been the biggest obstacle to European unity in support of Ukraine. European partners to Ukraine, who approved a $106 billion loan to the country last month, have insisted that they will not fall for Russian efforts to make them neutral mediators in the war.
Still, even with Ukraine’s public resistance to Russia, fears of another round of widespread destruction in Kyiv are palpable.
The Russian barrages have renewed worries that Kyiv may be running low on interceptors of ballistic missiles, which are in even shorter supply than usual because of the war in Iran. Mr. Zelensky sent letters to President Trump and to Congress this week pleading for more air-defense weapons, Dmytro Lytvin, a spokesman for Mr. Zelensky, told journalists on Wednesday.
After Russia hit Kyiv with the intense bombardment on Sunday, a volley that included a rare intermediate-range nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile, civilians who typically ignore alarms packed emergency bags and made plans for shelter in case of another strike.
In an apparent effort to divert Washington’s attention back to the conflict, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, called Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday to warn of the possibility of further assaults on Kyiv.
According to an official Russian account of the call, Mr. Lavrov expressed regret over what he called efforts by Ukraine and its European allies to undermine agreements reached between Moscow and Washington during a summit last year in Alaska. Those agreements have never been disclosed but are understood to include a demand that Ukraine withdraw from the eastern Donbas region.
On Tuesday, speaking after the call, Mr. Rubio said, “The danger in all of these wars as they continue and then they go on is that they always have the threat of escalation, of spreading into something new.”
Last week, Mr. Rubio said at a news conference that no “productive” talks were being held and that “the last few months, we just sort of sensed that there wasn’t a lot of progress being made.” He added that the United States would help where it could.
According to Ilya Grashchenkov, a political analyst in Moscow, the Russian rhetoric is directed in part at a domestic audience. After Ukrainian strikes against targets in Russia and in Russian-controlled territories, he said, “the authorities must demonstrate that the response will not be symbolic, but tough and systematic.”
Most of all, Mr. Grashchenkov said, the Kremlin has been shifting the conversation from Ukraine to the United States — not just promising new strikes but also notifying Washington in advance and effectively demanding that it consider their consequences for the U.S. diplomatic presence.
“Russia is trying to show that it’s ready to expand the scale of pressure on Kyiv while simultaneously sending a signal to Washington: further cooling toward the Ukrainian issue will not free the U.S. from the need to participate in the search for a solution,” Mr. Grashchenkov said.
“And if they fail to find a solution on a security architecture,” he added, “sooner or later Russia will have to use heavier weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons.”
Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting from Kyiv.
