Ukraine’s 40-day deep-strike campaign – launched by President Volodymyr Zelensky to “push the aggressor toward ending the war” – is now at its height.
In Western policymaking circles, the destruction of Russian infrastructure, the rise of fuel shortages, and the resultant public dissatisfaction lead many to conclude Russia is on the ropes. The strategy of expanding Ukraine’s deep strike capacities enjoys the support not only of major European NATO states but also of the White House, as recent comments from President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio make clear.
The Western pressure strategy rests on a simple calculation: raising the costs of continued fighting will increase discontent in Russian society to the point of forcing the Kremlin to the negotiating table via a ceasefire. For most Russians, who interpret the war as a struggle to secure concrete geopolitical goals, this calculation holds true; mounting costs erode support for war.
Missing from this picture, however, is a vocal and intense minority who see the war in moral terms, as a zero-sum struggle over sacred values. For them, intensified air strikes only fuel demands for retaliation and escalation rather than compromise.
The pressure trap building inside Russia is related to the Kremlin’s “limited war” model, an approach that satisfies neither camp. The first because of the spiraling costs, the second because limits frustrate hopes of victory. Each major strike on the Russian homeland only makes it harder for Putin to hold the ground between them.
The instrumental majority and the moral minority
Since 2022, the Kremlin has sought to reduce wartime friction and manage a delicate domestic equilibrium, in part by branding the conflict a “special military operation” and delaying mobilization. Throughout the course of the war, the West and Ukraine have worked to destabilize this domestic equilibrium. The new deep-strike campaign represents the latest and most direct attempt.
On the surface, the strategy appears to be working. President Vladimir Putin’s falling approval ratings, coupled with rising popular support for negotiations, encourage renewed predictions of Russia’s imminent exhaustion. Some Western observers argue a turning point is at hand. Such survey data, however, is only a rough indicator of changing opinions and attitudes. To grasp how the war’s costs translate into political pressure at home, we must factor in the contrasting instrumental and moral interpretations of the war across Russian society.
These two ways of understanding the war are distributed unevenly across Russian society. Survey data from the independent pollster Chronicles suggests one-third of Russians view the war’s aims instrumentally, as preventing NATO expansion or defending sovereignty (29.8%), while another third holds no clear view (31.4%). For both, mounting costs tend to raise support for negotiations: every strike on Russian soil and every fuel-price rise feeds doubt about whether the war is worth its price.
The minority, roughly one-quarter of respondents, frames the war morally in terms of restoring historical justice, defeating “Nazism,” or defending Russian civilization. Our analysis of pro-war Telegram channels shows that, as costs mount, demands for harsher reprisals increase, as does anger with the authorities for their seeming weakness. The hawks have a far more radical view of victory than the Kremlin: at this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, oligarch and ideological entrepreneur Konstantin Malofeev claimed the “optimistic” endgame was the capture of Kyiv and Odesa, the collapse of the European Union, and Russia’s deployment of nuclear weapons to “intimidate” the West.
For this camp, a negotiated settlement is denounced as a “dogovornyak,” or a rigged deal between Western leaders and unpatriotic elites betraying the nation’s wartime sacrifices. Here, a good war is better than a bad peace. Even the “spirit of Anchorage” following the 2025 Putin-Trump summit was read as “another Minsk,” a Western ploy to freeze the fighting and rearm Ukraine. While such moralist framings abound in Russia’s wartime information space, instrumentalist arguments for winding down the war are largely absent.
Silent doves and loud hawks
Russia’s skewed information space is why the moral minority’s influence becomes disproportionate to its numbers. In wartime, an instrumental case for de-escalation is easily branded as treason. Since 2022, the state has opened tens of thousands of administrative cases for “discrediting the armed forces” and hundreds of criminal cases for spreading “false information.” Out of fear, and in the absence of influential actors willing to channel this sentiment, the cost-weary majority stays silent. The few who speak are dealt with accordingly: Yabloko, the only party openly calling for a negotiated peace, has had several of its members prosecuted or jailed.
A moral case for escalation carries far less stigma because it is spoken in the regime’s own language. That makes it awkward to punish without alienating the war’s most committed supporters, the very constituency the Kremlin needs on its side. This is why hawks behave more boldly: they attack officials by name, raise money and equipment for frontline units, and seek sympathizers and patrons in the army and security services.
The Kremlin is therefore more reluctant to repress them than the anti-war opposition. Co-option is not always straightforward: the Ministry of Defense’s meetings with military bloggers or the incorporation of Alexander Dugin into major official events risk legitimating their hawkish criticism of the authorities. The hawks’ voice and organizational capacity, both of which the doves lack, could, if pressure rises, give it leverage over war policy.
The conflicting pressures of a moral “hawk” minority and instrumental “dove” majority are recognized inside the Kremlin. A February 2026 Presidential Administration document, leaked to the Dossier Center, warned that continuing the war risks a Pyrrhic victory. The tired majority, it argued, could be won over with a “controlled thaw,” while “discrediting” charges would be manufactured to muzzle the more restive minority. Such an operation carries significant risks. Russia’s entrenched security and military elite may not support repressing the war’s loudest champions; Putin’s support base could fracture. The ongoing deep strikes campaign on Russia also makes it harder to sell the war’s end as a win.
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
Putin has navigated these pressures by keeping the war within strict limits, betting Russia can outlast Ukraine and its backers in a war of attrition. Major escalation could trigger a stronger Western response, harm relations with China and India, and require the risky mobilization that the Kremlin has deliberately avoided.
But the expanding deep-strike campaign puts Russia’s strategy under strain. A sufficiently painful blow would invite calls for reprisals and validate the hawks’ claim that restraint has been a mistake all along. This is the pressure trap. Putin is caught between a silent majority tired of the war and a vocal minority that calls any compromise a betrayal. For now, the pressure is not critical. Putin will aim to strengthen air defenses, ignore both camps, and raise costs on Ukraine through reprisal strikes.
None of this means Ukraine’s strategy is mistaken. For Kyiv, deep strikes may be the best means of improving their negotiating position. Beyond their military returns, these attacks erode support for Putin among doves and hawks alike. But eroding that support is not the same as building a demand for peace.
For Western policymakers, this suggests it is wise to decouple support for deep strikes from the belief that the Kremlin can be compelled into a ceasefire. The value of these attacks is material: destroying military assets, damaging fuel infrastructure, and complicating Russian logistics. But they are not a pathway to peace.
In fact, the pressure meant to weaken Putin’s hand may instead strengthen the constituency most determined to reject any settlement short of maximalist goals. In this scenario, once again we would find that a Western strategy to impose costs on Russia results not in a Kremlin climbdown and a frozen peace but in the creation of a new rationale for conflict escalation.
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
