President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, under pressure from increased Ukrainian strikes at home, appeared in fatigues in a visit to what the Kremlin said was a frontline support post late Friday, where he touted battlefield progress and threatened to take more of Ukraine outside the Donbas region.<\/p>\n
Mr. Putin\u2019s appearance was the latest indication that he was doubling down in the face of Ukraine\u2019s expanding barrages<\/a>. It appeared intended to show the Russian public that the heightened Ukrainian strikes in recent weeks would receive a response and would not derail the Russian leader\u2019s battlefield aims.<\/p>\n The visit took place two days after Mr. Putin launched one of the biggest attacks on Kyiv of the war<\/a>, which left at least 30 people dead and was widely seen as a delayed response to a string of Ukrainian successes of late that have brought the war home for more Russians.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, Ukraine has caused fuel shortages across Russia<\/a> with widespread strikes on Russian oil refineries and launched the biggest drone attack on Moscow of the war<\/a>. Kyiv has also escalated an air campaign to cut off and squeeze Crimea<\/a>, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, causing rolling power outages and fuel and water shortages.<\/p>\n During Friday\u2019s appearance, Mr. Putin warned that the more Ukraine attacked Russia\u2019s civilian infrastructure, the more territory he would take as a \u201csecurity zone\u201d in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.<\/p>\n \u201cThis, like other territories we are discussing today, is historically Russian land,\u201d Mr. Putin said in response to a presentation from one of his commanders about Russian operations in those Ukrainian regions.<\/p>\n Kyiv\u2019s recent successes far from the battlefield have led to a shift in global perception of the war, with the Ukrainians appearing to be more on the front foot, despite facing troop shortages that have prevented them from retaking significant territory on the front line.<\/p>\n In recent days, the Kremlin has aggressively sought to challenge the emerging narrative by touting Russia\u2019s battlefield progress, even though Moscow\u2019s forces have been moving particularly slowly in recent months<\/a> owing to a conflict zone that is now saturated with drones.<\/p>\n Any narrative of Ukrainian momentum would undermine one of the Kremlin\u2019s key arguments in peace talks with President Trump: that Kyiv should hand over territory in the Donbas region that Russia hasn\u2019t taken yet, because its loss is inevitable.<\/p>\n The Donbas comprises the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Putin has vowed to take the entirety of both regions, but Ukraine still holds a heavily fortified area of the Donetsk region that is about the size of Delaware.<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s increased strikes on Russia and Crimea also come against the backdrop of growing exhaustion with the war<\/a> among the Russian public and a worsening economic situation<\/a>.<\/p>\n During the command post visit on Friday, Mr. Putin denounced what he called Ukraine\u2019s \u201cimaginary achievements\u201d and \u201csuccesses that we know don\u2019t actually exist.\u201d<\/p>\n He called Ukrainian leaders play actors who \u201cdon\u2019t really know how to do anything else and haven\u2019t been trained to do anything else,\u201d a pointed dig at President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, a former comedian.<\/p>\n Mr. Putin said Ukraine\u2019s \u201cblustery announcements\u201d about those successes would play into Russia\u2019s hands because Kyiv\u2019s leaders were deceiving themselves as well as their backers.<\/p>\n Mr. Zelensky has said his strikes on Russia are aimed at pressuring Mr. Putin to end the war. They also help shore up Ukraine\u2019s reputation with its Western backers and U.S. negotiators by countering the narrative that Ukraine has no cards left to play.<\/p>\n Mr. Putin spent most of the visit sitting beside battlefield maps and receiving highly specific reports from his military commanders, who included Russia\u2019s top military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. The intended messaging was clear: Mr. Putin is moving forward with his battlefield ambitions and won\u2019t be deterred, even as Ukraine erodes his ability to isolate Russians from the war.<\/p>\n Over the course of the conflict, which is now in its fifth year, visits by the Russian leader to the battlefield have been relatively rare.<\/p>\n When he has traveled to the front line, he has almost always appeared in nondescript battlefield command rooms like the one pictured Friday, in contrast to Mr. Zelensky, who has donned bulletproof vests in frontline hot spots<\/a> and publicly visited rank-and-file troops.<\/p>\n The location of the post or whether it was indeed close to the front was not visible from the Kremlin\u2019s released footage and couldn\u2019t be independently verified.<\/p>\n When Mr. Putin does appear near the front in fatigues, it is almost always at some inflection point in the war, when the Kremlin is trying to underscore a victory or make a point.<\/p>\n