The Russian “elite,” as Withold Rodkiewicz, a security expert at the Center for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw, calls them, know they’re not winning the war, and Ukraine’s increasingly effective attacks on oil and commercial infrastructure have the potential to destabilize the Kremlin’s grip on power.
“The analysis that’s around in Moscow is that the main reason that Ukrainians are able to resist is because they are supplied from the West,” he said, adding that nothing short of total victory in Ukraine will satisfy the Kremlin, reports Murray Brewster at CBC News.
“They’re not looking for a way out. They are not looking for … an off-ramp,” he said. “When they are thinking what to do next, an escalation is an obvious thing.”
Rodkiewicz said he believes the time will be right for Moscow sometime in September.
Canada’s former ambassador to NATO, Kerry Buck, said Russia has been out to destroy the alliance since its invasion of Crimea in 2014, and the conditions have only improved since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power last year.