Bloomberg, citing four sources close to the Kremlin, reported that Moscow considers peace negotiations on Ukraine to have reached an impasse and is preparing for an escalation of hostilities.
According to the agency, Russia plans to intensify ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv, including the city center, as well as on infrastructure facilities in other Ukrainian cities. The sources said the current phase of mutual strikes is not the peak of escalation.
The sources noted that negotiation formats that had been conducted for about a year and a half with the mediation of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump have effectively collapsed, with both sides returning to the starting point. Moscow still hopes that Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will bring new proposals, but expectations of a breakthrough are extremely low.
The Kremlin views Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, ports, and logistics centers as attacks by NATO countries, since the alliance supplies Kyiv with weapons and intelligence, Bloomberg wrote. According to the sources, sanctions and strikes on Russian infrastructure will not force Putin to end the war.
More and more Russian officials are concluding that Putin, as a last resort, could use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the Bloomberg sources claimed. Calls from pro-war hawks for such a step are growing louder, as losing the war is absolutely unacceptable for the Russian president. However, there are no signs that Russia is preparing for a nuclear strike.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, assessed the risk of using tactical nuclear weapons as "extremely low." In his words, the effectiveness of such a strike on the modern battlefield is limited, and the political costs of breaking the nuclear taboo are high: "As long as Moscow has room for escalation with conventional weapons, it has little reason to cross the nuclear threshold."