{"id":259871,"date":"2025-07-12T20:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/259871\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T20:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:49:13","slug":"why-russia-is-stepping-up-attacks-on-ukraine-dw-07-12-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/259871\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Russia is stepping up attacks on Ukraine \u2013 DW \u2013 07\/12\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday morning, Russia<\/a> carried out another drone attack on Odessa. The Ukrainian army’s territorial recruitment center and residential buildings were hit, local media reported.<\/p>\n

A day earlier, at least two people were killed in a massive overnight attack that targeted several districts in the capital Kyiv. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said an ambulance station was destroyed.<\/p>\n

The damage is part\u00a0of a series of sweeping combined attacks that included what Ukrainian media called a “night from hell”\u00a0in Kyiv on July 4, when the Russian army deployed more than 500 drones<\/a>, in addition to Kinzhal and Iskander missiles.<\/p>\n

Ukraine struggles with massive Russian drone attacks

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/video><\/p>\n

As a result, even US President Donald Trump, who had previously seen himself as a mediator in the conflict<\/a>, declared that he was disappointed<\/a> with Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin,”\u00a0Trump said. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”<\/p>\n

Shortly after these remarks, the US resumed deliveries of artillery shells\u00a0and mobile rocket artillery missiles to Ukraine<\/a>, news agency Reuters reported.<\/p>\n

Accelerated drone production in Russia<\/p>\n

Thanks to the expansion of its drone production, Russia is now in a position to carry out this level of attacks. It is no longer dependent on Iran as it was back in 2022.<\/p>\n

“They’re currently producing thousands a month,”\u00a0military technology expert David Hambling told DW. “That might make it up to tens of thousands, and that’s simply enough to swamp most forms of defense that would take out missiles.”<\/p>\n

Still, Colonel Markus Reisner from the Austrian Armed Forces told DW that Russia would not have the capacity carry out such attacks without the help of other countries. China supplies drone parts and North Korea delivers ballistic missiles, he added. “You can see that Russia is relying on supporters here,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"AA Russian drone during the attack on Kyiv on June 17, 2025Image: Efrem Lukatsky\/AP Photo\/picture alliance<\/p>\n

Experts predict new\u00a0summer offensive<\/p>\n

Following the recent attack on Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a> told news portal NV that the intensified shelling was a result of Putin’s wish for “people to suffer and flee Ukraine, to see houses, schools \u2014 life itself \u2014 destroyed everywhere, not just on the front line.”<\/p>\n

The New York Times, citing sources close to the Kremlin, reported that this is how Russia intends to break Ukraine’s defenses in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Colonel Reisner said that Putin has two strategic aims with his latest combined attacks: to destroy Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and to influence the Ukrainian public.<\/p>\n

“Targeted attacks on the population, which is intended to be further weakened by terror, are thus an indirect attempt to exert pressure on the Ukrainian government,” Reisner said.<\/p>\n

Many military experts like German political scientist Andreas Heinemann-Gr\u00fcder expect Russia to launch a new offensive this summer. He sees the increasing number of combined attacks as part of this campaign.<\/p>\n

Russia’s goal is to incapacitate Ukrainian air defenses to such an extent that the losses cannot be offset by supplies from Western countries, he said. The attacks could also signal that Russia is preparing for a “decisive battle,”\u00a0he added, saying that he could not rule out the possibility that Russia could corner Ukraine into subordinating to the Kremlin’s demands by around year’s end.<\/p>\n

How can the West help?<\/p>\n

The experts who spoke to DW all said that more decisive action from the West would be necessary to reclaim control on the battlefield. At the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome this week Zelenskyy also said that while Ukraine had found a solution to fend off Russian attacks in interceptor drones, his country’s defense sector remains in urgent need of investment.<\/p>\n

Ukraine is now achieving good results in the production of its own drones, but still cannot do without support, Colonel Reisner said. “It needs support from the West, especially for special weapons systems, such as the Patriot anti-aircraft missiles,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

\"AA Patriot air defense missile systemImage: U.S. Army\/ABACAPRESS\/picture alliance<\/p>\n

This week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said\u00a0that Germany was prepared to buy Patriot systems from the US for Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To provide truly effective aid, the West must overcome fears that the weapons supplied to Ukraine could fall into Russian hands, political scientist Heinemann-Gr\u00fcder said. Were that to happen, Western arms companies would worry about losing their technological edge, he explained. Another concern is that establishing joint ventures with Ukraine could drive down prices for their products.<\/p>\n

“These kinds of thoughts need to be overcome,”\u00a0Heinemann-Gr\u00fcder said.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in German. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday morning, Russia carried out another drone attack on Odessa. The Ukrainian army’s territorial recruitment center and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-259871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114842236764647708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}