Washington Post: Putin seeks new red lines as nuclear terrorism fails

Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin is seeking new red lines, realizing that the West is not succumbing to Moscow’s nuclear threats, The Washington Post reports. Amid discussions about allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with long-range projectiles, Russian propagandists have ramped up their intimidation of Western audiences.

“But inside the Kremlin, there is a growing recognition that the repeated use of the nuclear threat is starting to lose its potency and Moscow’s red lines are constantly being crossed,” the Washington, D.C.-based publication says.

Analysts and officials close to senior Russian diplomats said instead that “Putin is casting around for a more nuanced and limited response to the West allowing Ukraine to use longer range missiles to strike Russia.”

WP’s sources acknowledge that the West has grown more immune to the Russian leader’s threats.

The momentum of permitting Ukraine to take more action is increasingly alarming for Putin, particularly concerning a potential increase in attacks on Russian territory, says Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of France-based political consultancy R-Politik.

“For Putin this is a qualitative shift which takes the situation to a new level and which could be followed by a further expansion,” she said.

Russian officials had hoped that if the West did allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons, it would be “very limited.” 

“There is an understanding that the red lines drawn by Moscow are being ignored by the West, and there should be weightier and more significant steps from Moscow to demonstrate the seriousness of its intentions,” WP reported by citing an unnamed Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats.

Moscow may decide to respond by conducting sabotage operations against military targets or critical infrastructure in the West, where Russia’s involvement would be hard to prove. 

“It could also turn to proxy groups that are already battling Western interests, like the Houthi militia in Yemen that has been attacking Red Sea shipping,” said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of War Studies at King’s College in London.

Earlier, the Ukrainian World Congress urgently called on the U.S. and all of Ukraine’s allies to lift restrictions on strikes against military targets deep within Russian territory and to provide the requisite long-range projectiles for doing that.