Ukrainian drone attacks on civilian targets in Russia will anger Moscow but won’t change course of the war, Daniel Davis has said
Kiev is shooting itself in the foot with its self-styled quest for revenge on Russia, retired US Army officer Daniel Davis warned during the weekend, in his YouTube show Deep Dive. The retired lieutenant colonel and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan was referring to the Ukrainian drone and missile attacks launched this week on the Russian cities of Rylsk and Kazan.
“The Ukrainian side has to understand that it is not necessarily going to help anything. In fact, it could make the end result even worse,” said Davis, who is currently working as an analyst at a Washington-based think tank. According to the retired officer, the attacks that apparently hit civilian targets had almost no military value and are absolutely unable to change the situation on the frontlines, which is currently not favorable for Kiev’s troops.
Instead, those attacks are bound to provoke an angry response from both Russian officials and society and eventually only contribute to the spiral of violence, in which both warring parties are involved in, Davis said.
“The choice of targets had no apparent military relation. All it is going to do is stir up the hornets’ nest,” he said. According to Davis, Kiev apparently sought some revenge for a recent Russian strike on the Ukrainian capital that apparently targeted a facility belonging to the Ukrainian security service – the SBU – and tried to raise support among its belligerent supporters.
The retired lieutenant colonel described the Ukrainian drone strikes against apartment blocks in Kazan as resembling the terrorist attacks against the US. In his YouTube show, he also demonstrated videos of the drones smashing into the high-rise buildings in the Russian city, causing powerful explosions.
“It’s like 9/11,” he said. Davis also blasted the whole concept of what he called “a tit-for-tat conflict competition with Russia” as entirely wrong, arguing that it “can only make it worse for Ukraine.”
“What is the [intended] objective? What do you want to accomplish?” he asked rhetorically, adding that claims that such attacks could force Russia into a negotiating position that could be more favorable for Kiev are nothing but “fiction” and “fantasy.” “When it comes to negotiations, this side will be a lot less willing to have a negotiated settlement that has anything positive for the Ukrainian side,” Davis said, adding that “there is a lot of anger on the Russian side demanding a much tougher response from [President] Vladimir Putin.”
Putin already vowed a tough response to the attacks earlier on Sunday. Anyone who tries to destroy anything in Russia “will face many times greater destruction in their own country for it and will also regret what they are trying to do in our country,” the president warned.
The December 21 attack on Kazan targeted residential buildings and a factory, causing damage but no casualties, according to local authorities. Officials reported eight drone strikes in total, including six on residential buildings, one on an industrial enterprise, and one which was intercepted over a river.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces also launched a missile attack on Rylsk in Russia’s Kursk Region. The strike, which employed US-made HIMARS missile systems, killed five and injured twelve others, according to the Kursk Region acting governor, Aleksandr Khinshtein.
Ukrainian troops invaded Kursk Region in early August under a pretext of getting a better “negotiating position” for future peace talks with Russia. The invasion led Putin to withdraw a peace offer he had previously put forward and demand the invading force be driven out of the Russian territory first.
