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Russia threatened systematic strikes on Kyiv City in violation of the spirit of the Victory Day ceasefire, likely to posture strength after the humiliation of the ceasefire itself. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) warned on May 25 that Russia will launch a “systematic” strike series against Ukrainian defense industrial facilities, including drone design and production sites, decision-making centers, and headquarters in Kyiv City. The Russian MFA called for foreign citizens, diplomats, and international organizations to evacuate Kyiv City and warned Kyiv residents to avoid military and government infrastructure in the city. Russian forces have targeted civilian, government, defense industrial, and military objects in Kyiv City throughout the war, most recently in a May 23 to 24 strike that damaged government buildings and cultural sites. Russia’s warning and continued strikes are an attempt to obfuscate Russia’s weakness, particularly following its May 9 Victory Day parade. Russian President Vladimir Putin is attempting to recover from his humiliation from having to ask Ukraine for permission to hold the Victory Day parade and to distract from Russia’s inability to protect its capital and other deep-rear cities from Ukraine’s intensifying long-range drone strikes. Putin is also struggling to shield the Russian population from the strain on the Russian economy as a result of his war, and Russian economic and societal issues are generating domestic discontent with Putin and his government. Russian forces are also failing to make operationally significant advances in their ongoing Spring-Summer 2026 offensive, as Ukrainian counterattacks, overall drone dominance, and mid–range strike campaign are inhibiting Russian advances and increasing the material and personnel cost of its offensive operations.
The Kremlin is claiming that its strikes are retaliatory in response to an alleged Ukrainian strike against civilians to temper any Western urgency to respond to Russia’s intensified strikes on Kyiv, but this claimed justification does not align with the Kremlin’s historical pattern of behavior. The Russian MFA framed its May 25 threat against Kyiv City as a retaliation for Ukraine’s May 21 to 22 strikes against a college in occupied Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, which Russia also used as justification for its May 23 to 24 strike series against Kyiv City. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 25 to inform him about the Russian threat against Kyiv City and spread the Kremlin’s ongoing information operation falsely portraying Ukraine and its European partners as undermining peace efforts. These justifications are thin, however. Russia has historically launched its largest strike packages immediately before and after prominent bilateral or trilateral peace negotiations, likely to disrupt and prolong the peace process. Russia has not produced dispositive evidence that Ukraine’s May 21 to 22 strike against Starobilsk was against an exclusively civilian object, following Ukrainian claims that Russian forces established a military quarter on the grounds of the struck college. Russia has established legitimate military targets in civilian buildings before, likely in an effort to use civilians and civilian infrastructure as human shields. Russia is exploiting the ambiguous situation to allege that Ukraine committed a war crime when there is no clear evidence that it was necessarily so.
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