In a war of attrition now exceeding four years, recent weeks have seen dangerous signs of escalation from Moscow. While Russia intensifies strikes on Ukrainian cities, Kyiv continues long-range drone operations, pushing the conflict into volatile new territory.”
In just the past two weeks, the conflict has entered a far more volatile phase. The old guardrails have been trampled, the comforting illusion of predictability has shattered, and a war that once felt locked in stalemate has slipped back into dangerous, uncharted territory, where even a single misstep could ignite a wider regional conflagration, if not a nuclear Armageddon.
Russia is steadily climbing the escalation ladder, and contrary to the comforting narrative that has taken hold in the West, the Kremlin still holds a deep reservoir of potent cards well below the nuclear threshold.
The Chronology of Escalation
On the night of May 13-14, a relative lull in the Ukraine War was broken when Russia launched one of its biggest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine since the war started.
It launched over 1500 drones and dozens of missiles. One notable strike on May 14 hit an apartment building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, reportedly killing at least 24 civilians.
Ukraine responded by intensifying long-range drone operations against Russian targets, including oil facilities and military assets. On the night of May 21–22, Ukrainian drones struck a college campus and student dormitory in occupied Luhansk Oblast.
Russian authorities said that over 20 students died in the attack, and at least 18 of them were girls. Russia condemned it as a “monstrous crime” against civilians.
Two days later, on the night of May 23-24, Russia responded with one of the largest aerial assaults of 2026, approximately 600 drones and 90 missiles, including the hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile, which was used against Kyiv for the first time.
Multiple blasts occurred in Kyiv, including in government buildings, cultural sights, and residential areas.
Many Kyiv residents said they had never witnessed attacks of such intensity on the capital in the four years of the war.
Then, on May 25, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a strong statement regarding Ukraine. Condemning the strike by Ukrainian forces on the college building, the ministry warned that the incident was the last straw for Russia and that its “cup of patience has overflowed.”
According to the Foreign Ministry, the Russian military will now systematically target defense industry facilities in Kyiv.
Moscow urged foreigners, including diplomats and representatives of international organizations, to leave the Ukrainian capital “as soon as possible” and advised civilians to stay away from defense industry facilities.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov directly warned the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to evacuate American diplomats and citizens from Kyiv.
There was a clamor to escalate “systematic strikes” against the decision-making centers in Kyiv and Lviv. Meanwhile, Russian strategic thinkers noted that the dramatic strikes by Russia on Kyiv on the night of May 23 clearly marked a new escalation in the war.
For instance, Dmitry Suslov, Deputy Director for the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at HSE University in Moscow, said, “The transition to systematic strikes on defense industry facilities and decision-making centers in Kyiv was long overdue. The barbaric strike by the Ukrainian armed forces on Starobelsk marked a peak in their escalating terrorist activities. Russia’s retaliatory escalation sends a clear message to the European elites. The next step on the escalation ladder will likely involve direct strikes against targets within the EU and NATO countries.”
Talking about the Ukrainian strike on the student hostel, Andrey Ilnitsky, military expert and member of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (CFDP) noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry statement that the ‘cup of patience’ had overflowed means that the amount of suffering and anger that society and the state can put up with has reached a certain breaking point.
“In such a situation, transitioning to a strategy of ‘managed escalation’ seems like a rational necessity. In military terms, this strategy involves gradually increasing the costs for the Ukrainian nationalists and their Western partners.
“The adversary must realize that every step we take up the escalation ladder sends a clear message about our serious intentions, the inevitable expansion of strikes and the means of attack, demonstrating that the previous limits of restraint have been exhausted, and the next blow will be even more painful and will cause greater damage.”
Following these warnings, Russia launched another major attack on Kyiv on the night of June 1. More than 600 drones and dozens of missiles hit multiple cities, including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and others.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia launched 729 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 100 in one of the largest barrages of the war.
Kyiv took the heaviest hits. A 24-storey apartment building partially collapsed with people feared trapped, a… https://t.co/vd7gTZ6JM5
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 2, 2026
These massive strikes in Kyiv clearly suggest that the war has crossed a threshold and the previously self-imposed “limits of restraint” no longer hold.
🚨 KYIV HIT BY MASSIVE RUSSIAN ATTACK
Dozens of Russian one-way attack drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles targeted Kyiv overnight.
Ukraine-based monitors say it may have been one of the largest attacks on the capital since the start of Russia’s invasion.… pic.twitter.com/55cHHgDFcP
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) June 2, 2026
Again, on the night of June 2, Russia launched a record eight Zircon hypersonic missiles on Ukraine, killing at least 22 people.
Notably, Ukraine failed to intercept even a single Zircon missile.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 4 missiles hit Kyiv's Goloseevsky district in under a minute last night and every single one got through.
Past NATO's most advanced air defense systems.
That footage is the strongest argument Ukraine has brought to any NATO meeting this year.
Source: DDGeopolitics on… pic.twitter.com/yZVvrMp9tr
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 2, 2026
Originally designed as an anti-ship weapon against US carrier groups, the Zircon has been adapted for land strikes from coastal launchers in Crimea and Russia’s Kursk region. Its hypersonic speed allows it to reach Ukrainian targets in 3–6 minutes, leaving minimal reaction time for defenses.
Worryingly, according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia has an arsenal of over 230 Zircon missiles.
Separately, Russia launched 33 Iskander-M ballistic missiles from the Bryansk, Kursk, and Rostov regions, as well as from Crimea. Russia also launched 27 X-101 cruise missiles, and 5 Kalibr missiles, as well as 656 UAVs of various types, mostly Shaheds.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence warns Russia is planning further large-scale strikes on defense industry targets.
However, even a massive barrage of missiles and drones against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities would primarily inflict civilian suffering and infrastructure damage rather than fundamentally alter the battlefield dynamics.
The deeper question is what other rungs Russia could climb on the escalation ladder, short of the nuclear threshold, to coerce Ukraine, fracture Western support, or improve its negotiating position.
Russia’s Other Options
The Russian foreign ministry statement, released on May 25, warns that the Russian military will now launch “systematic strikes” on military facilities and decision-making centers in Kyiv.
The statement is telling, as it reveals Russia’s escalation ladder in the war.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, on the night of June 1, Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 attack drones in a massive, coordinated aerial assault across Ukraine.
The missiles included 33 Iskander-M ballistic missiles, 27 Kh-101 cruise missiles, 8 3M22 Zircon missiles, and 5 Kalibr cruise missiles.
Notably, this was the largest number of Iskander-M ballistic missiles Russia has launched in a single night.
Earlier, on May 24, Russia for the first time used its Orshenik missile on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
These strikes clearly indicate that Russia will no longer adhere to its self-imposed restraints in the four-year-old war.
Contrary to the belief popular in Western circles, Russia has so far shown tremendous restraint in the Ukraine War.
Despite the grinding war of attrition, the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine has followed two crippling restraints: Moscow has avoided launching strikes in civilian areas to avoid antagonizing the local population, as Moscow’s long-term goal in Ukraine is to have a friendly government and population in Kyiv.
Secondly, one of Russia’s goals in the Ukraine War is to deter a larger war with the West, either NATO or Europe.
Russia, therefore, wants to maintain a certain level of deterrence against Europe even when it is fighting Ukraine. Due to the need to maintain deterrence against Europe, Moscow has dipped into its high-end missile arsenal very sparingly.
Moscow understands that the threat of larger European participation in the Ukraine War is a credible one, and therefore, it can not exhaust its arsenal of arms, ammunition, interceptors, and missiles, as the US has done in Iran.
Washington has exhausted nearly one-third to half of its THAAD interceptors in the 40-day war with Iran, leaving it vulnerable if the war stretches or if there is a conflict with China or Russia. Russia wants to avoid this mistake.
However, Russia’s recent strikes signal that Moscow will no longer follow these self-imposed restraints.
The large-scale strikes in Kyiv suggest two things: first, if Ukraine targets Russian civilians, Moscow will also not hold back, as suggested in the Russian foreign ministry statement that its “cup of patience has overflowed.”
Secondly, if Moscow can not have a friendly state in Kyiv, it is prepared to have a rump state in Ukraine, as suggested in the warning of “systematic attacks on decision-making centers in Kyiv”.
If Russia opts for an all-out, no-holds-barred missile campaign against Ukraine, one in which it expends its arsenal without reserving weapons for a potential future conflict with NATO and targets all military targets, even those within civilian areas, it could inflict devastating damage on Kyiv within weeks, enough to severely degrade Ukraine’s ability to sustain its war effort.
While exact numbers remain classified, Russia possesses an arsenal of approximately 4,000 to 5,000 ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles. This stockpile is large enough to sustain dozens of missile strikes per day against Ukrainian targets for well over a year.
It remains to be seen how many rungs on the escalation ladder Russia is willing to climb.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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