Deep Strikes Risk Backfire by Energizing Russia's Hawks
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- Ukraine's deep-strike campaign, now at its 40-day peak under Zelensky's push to "push the aggressor toward ending the war," enjoys Western backing including from President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
- Chronicles survey data shows roughly 29.8% of Russians view the war instrumentally (NATO expansion, sovereignty), 31.4% hold no clear view, and about a quarter frame it in moral terms — historical justice, defeating "Nazism," defending Russian civilization.
- Russia's information space silences instrumental doves — tens of thousands of "discrediting the armed forces" administrative cases since 2022 and hundreds of criminal cases for "false information" — while moral hawks attack officials by name, raise funds for frontline units, and court patrons in the security services.
- Konstantin Malofeev told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum the "optimistic" endgame is capturing Kyiv and Odesa, collapsing the EU, and deploying nuclear weapons to "intimidate" the West — a maximalism hawks share but the Kremlin does not.
- A leaked February 2026 Presidential Administration document obtained by the Dossier Center warned of a "Pyrrhic victory" risk and proposed a "controlled thaw" to win over the tired majority while manufacturing "discrediting" charges against restive hawks.
- Yabloko, the only Russian party openly calling for a negotiated peace, has had multiple members prosecuted or jailed, illustrating the asymmetry that lets hawks speak more boldly than doves.
Why it matters: Western policymakers conflate eroding Putin's support with building demand for peace — but the source argues the deep-strike campaign empowers the roughly one-quarter moral-hawk minority that rejects any settlement short of maximalist goals, supplying Russia a new rationale for escalation rather than a frozen ceasefire.
