Russia's New Kyiv Strikes Are Offset of "Humiliating Request For Parade Ceasefire"

The Kremlin's savage bombardment of civilian targets in Kyiv is not the demonstration of strength it believes but an admission of weakness and humiliation. 

Putin has evidently yet to recover from being forced to beg Trump to intercede on his behalf with Zelensky so that he could have his armor-less 45 minute 'victory' parade without fear of Ukrainian drone attack. The latest missile and drone attacks on Kyiv are part of his increasingly futile effort to project military might even as his army is being pushed back by Ukrainian forces on the ground and his air defenses are exposed as somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent. Putin's vulnerability is obvious and growing. Taking that out on Kyiv's civilians is his pathetic answer. JL

The Institute for the Study of War reports:

Russia's strikes on Kyiv are to recover from the humiliation of having to ask Ukraine for a ceasefire and permission to hold Victory Day parade. The strikes are an attempt to obfuscate Russia’s weakness and distract from Russia’s inability to protect its capital and other deep-rear cities from Ukraine’s intensifying long-range drone strikes. Putin is also struggling to shield the Russian population from the strain on the Russian economy as a result of his war, and Russian economic and societal issues are generating domestic discontent with Putin and his government. Russian forces are also failing to make operationally significant advances in their Spring-Summer 2026 offensive, as Ukrainian counterattacks, drone dominance, and mid–range strike campaign are inhibiting Russia while increasing the material and personnel cost of its Ukraine operations.

Russia threatened systematic strikes on Kyiv City in violation of the spirit of the Victory Day ceasefire, likely to posture strength after the humiliation of the ceasefire itself. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) warned on May 25 that Russia will launch a “systematic” strike series against Ukrainian defense industrial facilities, including drone design and production sites, decision-making centers, and headquarters in Kyiv City.[1] The Russian MFA called for foreign citizens, diplomats, and international organizations to evacuate Kyiv City and warned Kyiv residents to avoid military and government infrastructure in the city. Russian forces have targeted civilian, government, defense industrial, and military objects in Kyiv City throughout the war, most recently in a May 23 to 24 strike that damaged government buildings and cultural sites.[2] Russia’s warning and continued strikes are an attempt to obfuscate Russia’s weakness, particularly following its May 9 Victory Day parade. Russian President Vladimir Putin is attempting to recover from his humiliation from having to ask Ukraine for permission to hold the Victory Day parade and to distract from Russia’s inability to protect its capital and other deep-rear cities from Ukraine’s intensifying long-range drone strikes.[3] Putin is also struggling to shield the Russian population from the strain on the Russian economy as a result of his war, and Russian economic and societal issues are generating domestic discontent with Putin and his government.[4] Russian forces are also failing to make operationally significant advances in their ongoing Spring-Summer 2026 offensive, as Ukrainian counterattacks, overall drone dominance, and mid–range strike campaign are inhibiting Russian advances and increasing the material and personnel cost of its offensive operations.[5]

The Kremlin is claiming that its strikes are retaliatory in response to an alleged Ukrainian strike against civilians to temper any Western urgency to respond to Russia’s intensified strikes on Kyiv, but this claimed justification does not align with the Kremlin’s historical pattern of behavior. The Russian MFA framed its May 25 threat against Kyiv City as a retaliation for Ukraine’s May 21 to 22 strikes against a college in occupied Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, which Russia also used as justification for its May 23 to 24 strike series against Kyiv City.[6] Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 25 to inform him about the Russian threat against Kyiv City and spread the Kremlin’s ongoing information operation falsely portraying Ukraine and its European partners as undermining peace efforts.[7] These justifications are thin, however. Russia has historically launched its largest strike packages immediately before and after prominent bilateral or trilateral peace negotiations, likely to disrupt and prolong the peace process.[8] Russia has not produced dispositive evidence that Ukraine’s May 21 to 22 strike against Starobilsk was against an exclusively civilian object, following Ukrainian claims that Russian forces established a military quarter on the grounds of the struck college.[9] Russia has established legitimate military targets in civilian buildings before, likely in an effort to use civilians and civilian infrastructure as human shields.[10] Russia is exploiting the ambiguous situation to allege that Ukraine committed a war crime when there is no clear evidence that it was necessarily so.

Russia began intensifying strikes against Kyiv City on the night of May 12 to 13, less than a day after the Victory Day ceasefire elapsed at midnight on May 11 – over a week before Ukraine’s strike against Starobilsk.[11] The Kremlin claimed that its May 23 to 24 missile and drone strikes against Kyiv City, which consisted of over 90 missiles and 600 drones, were in retaliation for the Starobilsk strike despite conducting them only a day later.[12] It is not feasible for Russia to have compiled such an extensive strike package or prepared for these strikes within 24 to 48 hours, however, and more likely spent weeks preparing for such an intensification. The Kremlin is attempting to frame the May 23 to 24 strikes and any strikes within the coming days as in retaliation for Starobilsk to obfuscate the real reason for intensifying these strikes: disguising the Kremlin’s embarrassment at needing Ukraine to permit Moscow to hold its May 9 Victory Day parade, at Russia’s poor battlefield performance, and at the increasing economic costs and societal tension the Kremlin is enduring as a result of over for years of war.[13] Russia has historically intensified its strikes against Ukraine to distract from Russian failures or Ukrainian successes that have embarrassed the Kremlin, such as Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb in June 2025, which exposed significant failures in Russian border protection and deep rear air defenses.[14] Russia is also likely escalating its strikes against Kyiv City to take advantage of a global Patriot interceptor shortage that is constraining Ukraine’s ability to defend against missile strikes, particularly ballistic missiles. The Kremlin is likely attempting to temper the Western, particularly US, response to its intensified strikes against Ukraine and Kyiv City in particular by falsely portraying these intensifications as in response to a single incident rather than as part of a broader pattern of escalating the war and avoiding peace talks.

The Russian government’s accusations that Ukrainian forces violated international law are an attempt to distract from Russian forces’ systematic violations of international law. The Russian MFA accused Ukraine of violating the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child in conducting the Starobilsk strike.[15] Russian forces have systematically abused Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW) and conducted battlefield executions of POWs in violation of the Geneva Convention, and the Russian military command is either enabling or directly ordering these war crimes.[16] Russia has also violated the Geneva Convention by forcibly mobilizing civilians in occupied Ukraine into the Russian military and by recruiting imprisoned Ukrainian POWs to fight for Russia.[17] Russian forces continue to systematically abduct and militarize children from occupied Ukraine and have been escalating efforts to temporarily transfer and deport Ukrainian children to Russian-run summer camp programs in Russia and occupied Ukraine in Summer 2026.[18] Legal experts consulted by the New York Times in June 2024 reported that Russia’s ongoing campaign to abduct Ukrainian children and strip them of their Ukrainian identity violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[19] Russian forces have systematically used riot control agents in strikes across the frontline in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and elements of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet [BSF]) have previously acknowledged Russia’s usage of these weapons.[20] Russian forces regularly conduct a “human safari” across the frontline – using tactical drones to “hunt” civilians and civilian infrastructure – and publish footage of strikes on civilian targets, including a May 14 strike against a UN vehicle in Kherson Oblast.[21] This non-exhaustive list of Russian forces‘ systematic violations of international law, including the same statutes they accuse Ukrainian forces of violating, demonstrates just some of the crimes from which the Kremlin is trying to distract, as it accuses Ukrainian forces of violations of which the Kremlin has presented no proof. Russian forces’ own actions demonstrate that the Kremlin is not serious about upholding principles of international law, and its justifications for why it has and plans to strike Kyiv are thin.