Russia’s Aerial Assault on Ukraine » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

President Trump called Putin “crazy” following his massive missile barrage on Kyiv last week and warned that if he tried taking all of Ukraine, “Russia would cease to exist.” But he still won’t rush to impose secondary sanctions to shut down Russia’s oil business for fear that it could jeopardize sensitive trade negotiations with China and India and further damage international supply chains while doing little to alter events on the battlefield that are going Putin’s way.

“Tariffs are rather blunt and long-term measures, ill-suited to be used as tactical weapons in a mediation attempt to push a less willing party to the negotiating table,” says Sergey Varulenko, chief oil expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The loss of oil revenues would create many problems for the Russian economy, but would not bring it to its knees immediately.”

Last weekend, Russia hit Ukraine with the largest missile and drone attack launched in the war, targeting Kyiv, Odessa, and other cities, with enhanced versions of Iranian Shaheds, which it now produces domestically in large volume, powered by jet engines and hundred-pound explosive payloads. At the same time, Russian ground forces are reaching key strategic objectives in Ukraine’s central eastern region of Donetsk and possibly Zaporizhzhia, where they are poised to break through Ukrainian front lines. (RELATED: Zelensky Has Left Ukraine With a Poor Hand)

Professor Michael Clarke of the U.K.’s Royal United Services Institute argues that since it’s taken Russia well over a year of constant fighting, tens of thousands of casualties, and huge equipment losses to advance some 30 miles into Donetsk, stronger economic pain could weaken its ability to march further. “I don’t see Russia’s army making it into 2026,” he says. But the amount of territory gained is less important than what’s in it, and areas that Russian troops are now entering contain the logistics and infrastructure to sustain Ukraine’s defensive lines.

Russian 3T Strategy

The most intense fighting continues to rage along a stretch of approximately 120 miles running south to north between the crucial Ukrainian strongholds of Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar, which are largely encircled or semi-occupied by Russian troops. The Russians are already bypassing Ukrainian defensive positions in some areas and threatening crucial logistical lines along highway TO504 between Pokrovsk and the city of Kostyantynivka. While still some 20 miles from this main supply artery, Russian units are already targeting certain points of the highway with fiber optic wire-guided drones, which are impervious to electronic jamming and wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s supply columns in Kursk, leading to its army’s collapse on that front. (RELATED: Running Out of Cards in Kursk)

Russia has also consolidated control of Toretsk, located about midway between Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar and some 15 miles east of Kostyantynivka, which is the gateway to the main industrial center of the Donbas and ultimate Russian target: Kramatorsk, which has a population of 100.000.

Russian attempts to advance directly on Kostyantynivka have so far encountered stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces dug into newly fortified bunkers containing their own highly effective drone piloting units. But Russia is developing capabilities to locate these units and gradually take them out with precision-guided 1-ton glide bombs launched from Su-34 fighters.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Russia is perfecting a strategy of “Triple Strangulation” to close Ukrainian positions: massed artillery, infantry, and a mechanized assault force scattered Ukrainian units to take cover in defensive bunkers as the area is saturated with attack and surveillance drones. Once the fixed positions are located, they are hit with precision-guided artillery and air strikes. Frontal assaults are limited to the initial stages of offensives, which graduate to more methodical maneuvers aimed at isolating and encircling enemy positions. Trench clearing is generally conducted by teams of Motorized Infantry mounted on motorbikes and light vehicles to reduce the exposure of tanks and APCs that are easy targets for drones and dwindling in supply.

The commander of Russian forces in Donetsk, General Andrey Mordvichev, who is widely credited with developing the 3T strategy, was just promoted by Putin to head Russian land forces. His experience leading sieges of the cities of Mariupol, Avdiivka, and most recently, Pokrovsk, is applicable in the upcoming assaults against Kostyantynivka and Kramatorsk, which Putin expects to have well underway before serious peace negotiations.

Icing the Momentum

The 30-day ceasefire for which Zelenskyy, the Europeans, and the U.S. were pushing would have purely worked to Kyiv’s advantage by allowing a window in which to reconfigure its frontline defenses and possibly withdraw brigades trapped in Pokrovsk and other encircled pockets that face possible annihilation.

But Ukrainian military planning might be impaired by an apparent rigidity of its military leadership. General Olexandr Syrskyi, who masterminded the disastrous push into Kursk, squandering valuable resources in a vain attempt to hold Russian territory at the expense of weakening Donetsk’s defenses, remains in place even as ranking members of the armed forces are starting to complain.

General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, an architect of past Ukrainian victories whom Zelensky replaced with Syrskyi for the push on Kursk, advocated last week for a new strategy to approach negotiations with Russia, telling the press that “hope is no strategy.” General Olelksandr Shyrshyn, commander of Ukraine’s most professionally trained NATO-equipped units, the 47th Mechanized Brigade, which got badly mauled in Kursk, resigned from the army in disgust last week, accusing military leaders of “giving senseless orders that cause needless casualties.”

Russian military bloggers have commented on the “senselessness” of pouring more reserves into Kursk instead of “closing the gaps in Donetsk.”One of Ukraine’s handful of newly delivered F-16 fighters was recently lost to Russian S-400 air defense missiles while flying combat missions over Kursk.

“I have never received more stupid objectives than in the current direction … the stupid loss of people trembling in front of stupid generals leads to nothing but failures,” Shyrshyn declared in written statements to the press.

Punitive Tariffs on Russia

None of these immediate problems can be resolved with secondary sanctions or “punitive tariffs” on countries importing Russian oil. The Carnegie report calls it a “loose loose proposition” at a time of ongoing U.S. tariff wars with India and China.

“How are these punitive tariffs supposed to work? Will they be applied in addition to those announced on April 2?” says Sergey Vakulenko, Carnegie’s oil and gas industry expert and a former executive with Royal Dutch Shell.

“Until recently, the Western coalition was unwilling to impose charges against Chinese, Indian, and Turkish refineries buying Russian oil. These are large enterprises, many with state participation, and sanctioning any of them would create a major crisis,” says Vakulenko.

Any efforts by Treasury Secretary Bessent to play India and China against each other to gain a U.S. advantage in the highly sensitive trade negotiations could collapse if secondary sanctions were suddenly slapped on all the parties.

“The proposed secondary tariffs might end up subjecting Americans to the penalties intended for the Russian state,” according to Varulenko.

The Trump administration may have no choice but to continue military aid to Kyiv to try to put a break on Putin’s advances. Despite all their bluster, the Europeans are way short of filling the void. Thirty percent of Ukraine’s military deliveries come from Europe, according to General Syrsky.

But the administration should make it perfectly plain to the Europeans that it will not jeopardize crucial trade negotiations or agree to any stepped-up support for Ukraine without a change of leadership in Kyiv, as top ranks of Ukraine’s military now seem to be suggesting.

Over the past few days, Russia has been massing troops to threaten Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in the northeast and occupying islands in Kherson’s river delta along the south. They were securely held by Ukrainian Marines until Syrsky moved them to Kursk, where they are being decimated as the Russians advance into Sumy.

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