Ukraine’s drones could crash Russian banks<\/a><\/p>\nOn the outskirts of Russian cities, warehouses belonging to the country’s largest online retailer are being struck by Kyiv’s drones, with some analysts saying it could lead to a financial crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Repeated strikes on oil facilities mean long queues at petrol stations have been a common sight around Russia this summer.<\/p>\n
Hecker said while there was no question Russia was under crushing economic pressure from the attacks on its energy infrastructure, predictions of the “impending collapse” in the Russian economy were “probably exaggerated”.<\/p>\n
But Ukraine’s assault on Russia’s largest online marketplace, Wildberries \u2014 a company often compared to Amazon \u2014 is making the cost of the war harder for ordinary Russians to ignore.<\/p>\n
‘People could be saying, Putin was right all along’<\/p>\n
More than 20 Wildberries warehouses have been hit by Ukraine, which says the company is a legitimate wartime target because it sells military equipment.<\/p>\n
The retail giant’s reach in Russia is huge. It is used by 79 million people each month and accounts for around 2 per cent of the country’s GDP.<\/p>\n
John Lough, the head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, said there was a chance this strategy could backfire.<\/p>\n
“It is a real possibility that a section of the Wildberries consumer base will say, yeah, we should be fighting this war more aggressively,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They could also say we shouldn’t have allowed this to happen because the Ukrainians did this to us with the support of their Western partners and we understand what Putin’s saying, that we are at war with the so-called collective West.”<\/p>\n
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Even inside Ukraine, the long-range drone strategy has its critics. Some of the country’s opposition MPs are questioning whether it is worth the risk.<\/p>\n
They argue Ukraine’s drone strikes in Russia are provoking Moscow to retaliate with a more destructive response.<\/p>\n
Miron warned the campaign could “backfire” on Zelenskyy and potentially rally more Russians behind Putin.<\/p>\n
“One portion of the [Russian] population might be dissatisfied and afraid [because of the attacks], the other portion of the population, which was neutral or perhaps against the war, might now be supporting the war,” she said.<\/p>\n
“People could be saying, Putin was right all along, they’re attacking Wildberries \u2014 it’s a civilian target, so this can be perfectly used by the Russian government to convince the population of the righteous cause of the war.”<\/p>\n
As Ukraine has taken the war deeper into Russia, Moscow’s response has been swift. It’s targeted critical infrastructure like the Odesa Port, which has been struck repeatedly, suspending vital shipping and threatening one of Ukraine’s economic lifelines.<\/p>\n
Associate professor and senior research fellow in defence and strategic studies at Perth’s Edith Cowan University, Alexey Muraviev, told ABC News Radio that Russia’s strikes were causing massive problems in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
“Russia are systematically destroying petrol stations, certainly in Ukraine’s east, which also causes enormous problems with people refuelling, and they are targeting bridges and railway systems,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So Ukraine is actually [receiving] more damage in addition to now growing international criticism while Russian civilian casualties are actually increasing.”<\/p>\n
While Russia was attacking Ukraine’s cities and hitting civilian infrastructure like apartment buildings long before Kyiv’s latest campaign, things have escalated lately.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the United Nations said there had been a “disturbing escalation” in civilians deaths, with hundreds killed and thousands injured in Ukraine this summer.<\/p>\n
Kyiv is also grappling with a critical shortage of interceptor missies.<\/p>\n
“A few days ago, Putin hurled buckets of ballistic missiles at Kyiv and Ukraine wasn’t able to shoot them down,” Hecker said.<\/p>\n
“That’s when Ukraine suffered a very large spike in civilian casualties.”<\/p>\n
Ukraine said it had received only a third of the air defences from its allies this year, compared to the same period last year.<\/p>\n
“That situation is really quite desperate,” Hecker said.<\/p>\n
Analysts say Ukraine’s increasing drone strikes could be an attempt to pressure Putin back to the negotiating table in a bid to end the war. So far, there is little indication of that happening.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy’s strategy of making Russians feel the war more is working. What’s less clear, is whether the pain his own people are feeling will pay off in any way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine has been firing drones hundreds of kilometres deep inside Russian territory almost every day since June. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[414,26,314,7199],"class_list":["post-27702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-putin","tag-ukraine","tag-war","tag-wildberries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}