This weekend, Russia bombed the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with unusually large numbers of attack drones and missiles.
Now the government in Moscow is warning of further widespread attacks in the near future. Possibly more indiscriminate in nature, as people are being urged to avoid both military and civilian sites.
Russia is trying in every possible way to break down the resilience of the Ukrainians, according to Carolina Vendil Pallin, research leader in the Russia group at the Swedish Defence Research Institute (FOI):
Because successes on the battlefield are not coming.
“Want to distract”
Major attacks on Kyiv are not expected to have any decisive military significance, as the war has stalled along the front line in the east. Nor is that likely to be the aim, according to Vendil Pallin.
"It's more to break the political will in Kyiv that they're doing this. But so far it's shown that the more they push, the more resistance there is in Kyiv," she says.
The war has recently affected Russia to an increasing extent. Ukraine's attacks are hitting more places and causing greater uproar among the civilian population.
A few weeks ago, a brief ceasefire was brokered to allow a traditional military parade to be held in Moscow. The fact that Vladimir Putin effectively had to ask Ukraine's permission was a humiliation from which he is now trying to recover, the think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes in an analysis .
Putin is also believed to want to distract from the fact that Russia cannot stop drone attacks on Moscow and other cities.
Purpose to scare
The Russian economy is under severe strain and even though a majority of Russians support the war, polls seem to show that more and more people want it to end, points out Carolina Vendil Pallin.
This autumn, elections will be held for the State Duma, the parliament.
It's not that those in power are afraid of losing the election, but they would like to have positive messages to deliver to the population, says the FOI researcher.
Russia's threat to Kyiv is accompanied, as on several previous occasions, by warnings to foreign citizens to flee the city immediately. There is also an ulterior motive there, according to Vendil Pallin:
"They are pushing for us to be afraid, for us to stop supporting Ukraine and to see it as pointless. It is very much an influence operation on their part," she says.
