As Ukraine’s European backers deal with myriad challenges at home — violent student protests in France, the rise of right-wing forces in Germany and a mounting fuel crisis across the continent — Russian President Vladimir Putin is counting on a collapse of European support for Kyiv in the coming months, Russian and European officials and analysts say.
The Russian economy is struggling under the weight of international sanctions, and the Kremlin is laboring to cover a yawning budget deficit. But after Putin’s party secured a scripted win in parliamentary elections last month and Russian forces pounded Ukrainian schools, power plants and bridges with ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, he has expressed no interest in dropping his maximalist demands in exchange for peace.
Instead, officials and analysts say, he appears to be proceeding on the belief that he has the advantage in a war of attrition against not only Ukraine but also Europe — which, as the Trump administration stops seeking new congressional funding for Kyiv, the Kremlin increasingly views as its main obstacle to victory.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday made an unexpected visit to Kyiv, where he announced $1.5 billion in new aid to Ukraine. But his own political future is uncertain after stunning gains in regional elections by the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which opposes aid for Ukraine.
Putin, meanwhile, is working to advance Russia’s position on several fronts, Russian and European officials and analysts say.
By targeting civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, they say, he’s aiming to make the capital unlivable by winter, destabilizing the country. He’s hoping that by spring, Europe will no longer have the appetite — or the ability — to support Ukraine.
“Putin has the view that by summer the situation in Europe will change and support for Ukraine will fall away,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, now a leading opposition figure in exile in London. “This gives the Kremlin the motivation to continue its brazen attacks.”
Moscow has been escalating what European leaders have called a “hybrid war” against Europe to further undermine support for Kyiv, including, they say, online disinformation, cyberattacks and sabotage, an attempted drone attack on Germany’s Leipzig airport in August and, last week, another threat to use nuclear weapons.
“We will take the path of escalation” to deter Europe, one Russian official told The Washington Post, “as well as strikes on Ukraine to take full advantage of the lack of missile defense.” Efforts to restart peace talks were going “nowhere,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Putin had indicated he would be ready to return to talks once the Duma elections were over. But he claimed last week that Ukrainian drone attacks over the election period Sept. 19 and 20 had derailed any possibility of a restart.
“The Russian leadership is concerned that the level of involvement of Europe in the conflict is constantly growing,” said a Russian academic close to senior diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive discussions. “And of course Moscow would like to stop the process somehow.”
The head of foreign intelligence in Germany, Ukraine’s largest backer, warned the Bundestag, the German legislature, on Monday that Moscow was stepping up an aggressive “shadow war” against the country to undermine its support for Kyiv. “Russia is putting us to the test and closely watching how we handle this situation,” Federal Intelligence Service chief Martin Jaeger told lawmakers. “From the perspective of the Kremlin leadership, any sign of wavering invites them to further increase the pressure on Germany. … We have to stand up to that.”
Merz last week said Moscow’s actions were a “sign of Russia’s desperation in the face of its unsuccessful war in Ukraine.” And some analysts in Moscow say stepping up attacks on Europe and nuclear bluster is the Kremlin’s only remaining option as Russian finances come under increasing strain. “The money is running out,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an independent political analyst based in Moscow.
A draft federal budget for next year includes huge new tax hikes to fund an increase in spending on the Russian military to a record $202 billion. New taxes this year have already brought economic growth to a halt.
A treasury auction was canceled last week after Russian banks, concerned the new spending is unsustainable, balked at buying state debt, undermining a key avenue for the government to cover its funding gap.
Still, the Russian official said, the economic “machine” is “holding.” As political forces with more pro-Moscow views rise in Europe, “strategic waiting and patience are also tactics, of course.”
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s right-wing National Rally, is leading in polls ahead of the country’s presidential election next year. Le Pen told the newspaper Le Figaro last month that deteriorating state finances meant France would no longer be able to provide as much support to Ukraine.
The French government, trying to contain spiraling borrowing costs, has proposed a budget for next year that foresees $48 billion in cuts and tax increases. The government is facing a backlash as students across France protest underinvestment in schools and crumbling infrastructure. Twenty-four schools have been “burned or ransacked,” according to the education minister; up to 500 schools remained closed on Monday.
After Merz appeared in Kyiv on Sunday, Alternative for Germany co-leader Alice Weidel criticized the chancellor for “promising further billions in German taxpayer money that is missing from the pension and health insurance funds, while Germany is mired in its worst energy crisis.”
“It’s all too much to fathom anymore,” she wrote. Weidel has said Germany should turn supplies of Russian gas back on.
Putin has reveled in Europe’s financial and political challenges. He told the annual Valdai gathering of international foreign policy analysts last week that European leaders’ complaints of escalating hybrid attacks were aimed at distracting attention from their own domestic woes. “Look at what’s happening with the economy,” he said. “Look at what’s happening to social policy, with the living standards of citizens of the biggest European states. In these conditions they have to … switch the attention of their citizens from internal problems to problems of an external nature.”
Asked by a journalist whether Russia would try to dismantle the European Union, he said no effort was needed: “They will fall apart by themselves.”
Putin is counting on “crises mounting,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Eurasia Russia Center. “And that the current leaders who are seen as anti-Russian and inadequate just won’t be able to cope.”
Russia claimed last week it had information that NATO was preparing an “air and naval blockade” of Kaliningrad. The foreign ministry warned the Western alliance that the country was ready to respond to any attempt to isolate its Baltic exclave with “all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons.”
NATO, in response, accused Moscow of “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.”
Russia made the threat after a British documentary series depicted a fictional war game exercise. But officials said they were also responding to recent NATO military exercises in the region and an operation in the Baltic Sea to protect underwater infrastructure.
Denmark’s defense intelligence service warned last month of “a low but growing risk that Russia will launch a limited military attack against one or several NATO countries” on its border “in the coming months.” Given Russian hybrid attacks, Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken last week predicted “a dark winter ahead.”
French President Emmanuel Macron called an unusual meeting last month with the leaders of all the country’s political parties and security chiefs to discuss the “intensifying” threat.
The Kremlin, Stanovaya said, is operating on “the understanding that there are different forces in Europe, and that there are those who don’t want the situation to escalate to nuclear confrontation.”
Moscow’s policy on Europe has become “schizophrenic,” she said. “Putin is signaling that there is an official and unofficial line that we don’t want to go to war with Europe” while warning that “we have nuclear weapons if you will continue arming Ukraine and build around us all kinds of military infrastructure and threaten Kaliningrad and so on.”
But all Putin really wants, she said, is for Europe to become “more pragmatic” and follow the path taken by President Donald Trump.
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