The government in Kiev and its handlers in NATO are resorting to terrorism because they have been “demilitarized” by Russia during the Ukraine conflict, military analyst Andrey Martyanov has said.

Ukraine has intensified drone attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, residential areas, and vehicles including passenger buses, amid continued setbacks on the front line in recent months.

Moscow warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure and “decision-making centers” in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks, including one in the Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22. On that occasion, Ukrainian forces targeted a college dormitory in the town of Starobelsk in several waves of drone attacks late at night while students were asleep, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injuring dozens of others.

Martyanov told RT on Friday that he believes that the responsibility for the attacks on civilian targets inside Russia lies with NATO as the bloc’s officers are “essentially in the operational strategic command of the armed forces of Ukraine.” 

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“Europe, NATO in general, and the US have been effectively demilitarized” during the Ukraine conflict and lack military hardware to affect the situation on the ground not only at a strategic, but even on a tactical level, he argued.

“Terrorism… is the only weapon they basically have… They will continue to attack children, hospitals. This is what they do. This is… well, basically, the moral qualities, or rather lack thereof, of the Western European elites. They are also very scared,” the analyst stressed.

Russia carried out another large-scale UAV and missile strike against military-related targets in Ukraine on Thursday, hitting drone-manufacturing facilities, fuel depots, and energy infrastructure.

The raids “will be consistent and… nonstop, essentially. And that’s what we are observing. The intensity probably is going to increase,” Martyanov said, giving his characterization of the Russian president’s position.

READ MORE: Kiev ablaze as Russia targets Ukrainian war infrastructure (VIDEOS)

“It’s not just that they attack industrial facilities. They are now hunting NATO and Ukrainian top brass,” which indicates that Moscow is not interested in negotiating anymore, but intends to achieve victory on the battlefield, he stated.

A Ukrainian missile strike on Russia’s Belgorod Region overnight has left a woman dead and caused water and power outages, acting Governor Aleksandr Shuvaev has said.

Another woman was injured and five cars were damaged, the official reported on Friday.

In Smolensk Region, a Ukrainian attack drone sparked a fire at an industrial facility but resulted in no injuries, Governor Vasily Anokhin has said.

In Krasnodar Region, drone debris caused damage in nine separate locations, local officials said. The roofs and windows of several buildings were hit, while strikes on a gas pipeline and a power grid pole did not interrupt supplies, according to the report.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported intercepted 155 Ukrainian kamikaze drones overnight.

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Escalating long-range attacks on Russian infrastructure, including oil refineries and bridges in border regions, has become a key element of Kiev’s war strategy, as manpower shortages have prevented them from turning the tide on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian government is reportedly asking its Western sponsors for tens of billions of dollars in additional funding, claiming there is a small window of opportunity to force Moscow to walk back its goals.

Moscow has responded by ramping up its own attacks. On Thursday morning, Kiev was hit by what Ukrainian officials have called one of the biggest Russian strikes on the capital since the conflict escalated in 2022.

The Russian Defense Ministry released a list of targeted locations, including production facilities for Ukrainian deep-strike drones and missiles, as well as other sites essential to Ukraine’s war effort.

A Ukrainian drone strike on a market in Tokmak, Zaporozhye Region has left at least five residents dead and another 18 injured on Friday, Governor Evgeny Balitsky has reported.

The Russian official stressed that the casualty count is preliminary, as local rescue services continue to respond to the emergency.

His initial report said victims were being rushed to a local hospital amid an ongoing Ukrainian raid.

Balitsky said Ukrainian forces deliberately struck people who were buying groceries and fit a pattern of attacks against civilian locations.

A series of Ukrainian overnight attacks on the region have killed three people and injured several others, Balitsky previously said. One of the fatalities was the driver of a truck hit by a drone, according to the official. The two others were an elderly couple, whose bodies were recovered from a destroyed rural home.

Zaporozhye Region is among former Ukrainian territories that Kiev claims sovereignty over and seeks to retake through continued hostilities. It joined Russia following a referendum in late 2022, which the Ukrainian government branded a “sham.” Parts of the region remain under control of Ukrainian forces.

READ MORE: Ukrainian attacks won’t stop Russian advance – Putin

Earlier in the day, the acting governor of Russia’s Belgorod Region, Aleksandr Shuvaev, reported that an overnight missile strike killed a woman and left another one injured.

Russian troops are nearing the end of the search-and-destroy operation to eliminate the remnants of the Ukrainian garrison in the city of Konstantinovka, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has announced.

The hostilities in the city, located in the northwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), have intensified in recent weeks. Russian forces have advanced to the city from multiple directions, effectively cutting it in half and disorganizing the Ukrainian defenses in the area.

Konstantinovka is part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of settlements in the northern part of the DPR. The agglomeration has been heavily fortified by Ukrainian forces, which effectively turned it into one large fortress. Konstantinovka is located roughly 15km to the south-east of Kramatorsk, with the town of Druzhkovka lying in between.

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On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said troops were close to completing “the clearing of the city of scattered units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.” Recent media reports have suggested the Ukrainian command has effectively written off the remaining troops, abandoning attempts to bring in reinforcements while denying the garrison’s repeated requests to withdraw.

Over the past 24-hour period, Ukraine has lost up to 80 servicemen in the city, over 20 soft and armored vehicles, and three artillery pieces, as well as 25 ground unmanned vehicles, the ministry stated. Apart from that, Russian forces have destroyed some 27 Ukrainian UAV command and control points, it added.

Drone footage from the city shared by the Defense Ministry features multiple Ukrainian ground unmanned vehicles, apparently used to bring supplies to the blocked troops, hunted down and destroyed by Russian FPV drones. The video also shows a group of Ukrainian soldiers taking cover in a residential house and ending up being subjected to artillery shelling.

The commander of the international brigade ‘Pyatnashka,’ Akhra Avidzba, told the Russian news outlet Vesti later in the day that the city had already effectively come under Russian control. Avidzba, better known by his call sign ‘Abkhaz,’ pointed at the change of rhetoric in Ukraine, which had long-portrayed Konstantinovka as a part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk fortress.

“The rhetoric before was that it’s an agglomeration of fortresses and cities that will form a unified line of defense, but now they’re saying, ‘So what if we lost Kostiantynivka or will lose it? Like, nothing depends on it.’ This rhetoric alone makes it clear they’ve already abandoned Konstantinovka,” Avidzba said.

The situation in which Poland now finds itself is a good example of how even a relatively successful country can drive itself into a foreign policy impasse through the narrowness of its own thinking.

Poland is not, by modern standards, an inept state and its economy is growing, its institutions function and it occupies an important place in European affairs. Yet its foreign policy has been reduced to a single organizing principle: opposition to Russia. Warsaw has designated Moscow as its ideal adversary and has subordinated almost every other aspect of its external activity to the goal of harming Russia by any means available.

This applies first and foremost to Poland’s relationship with the Kiev regime. It would be naïve to believe that Polish politicians have ever held many illusions about the nature of the authorities in Ukraine and nor have they traditionally had warm feelings towards their Ukrainian neighbors. On the contrary, the Polish elite’s attitude to Ukraine has long been shaped by contempt and historical suspicion and this view has been formed over centuries and, it must be admitted, has not emerged without reason.

Nevertheless, in recent years Warsaw has made itself Kiev’s most energetic advocate in Europe as it’s supplied Ukraine with vast quantities of weapons and has turned its own territory into the main logistical hub for Western military aid. At the same time, the Polish authorities have done everything possible to destroy channels of dialogue with Moscow and Minsk, casting Poland as Russia’s most irreconcilable opponent, even by the standards of the wider West.

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Among all the countries that matter in European politics, Poland chose the most radical course during the current military and political crisis. The logic was simple, if Ukraine could be used against Russia, then Ukraine had to be supported, whatever the cost.

The problem is that Warsaw convinced itself of something that was never realistic in that it imagined that Ukraine could serve as a powerful Polish instrument for containing Russia while remaining manageable and responsive to Polish requests. Some in Poland also appear to have believed that Kiev was fighting for a European choice and that its desire to join NATO and the European Union would make it more accommodating.

Both assumptions were wrong and the Ukrainian authorities have behaved towards their Polish patrons in exactly the way one should have expected. They have taken what was offered, demanded more, and then publicly insulted and humiliated those who helped them. The recent exchange of awards and diplomatic gestures is only the most visible symptom of a deeper problem after Poland imagined a relationship that couldn’t exist and then built a strategy around this chimera.

As a result, Polish foreign policy now looks absurd as Warsaw has invested enormous political and emotional capital in Ukraine, only to find that Kiev feels no need to show gratitude. Worse still for Poland, there is no obvious way out because a serious confrontation with Kiev would undermine the whole anti-Russian structure of Polish policy, while continuing as before means accepting repeated humiliation.

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This is not an accident and it flows from the central fixation of Polish foreign policy, Russia as the sole true object of Warsaw’s interest in the world.

That fixation has deep historical roots as for Poland, Russia isn’t merely a neighboring power, but a source of complexes and envy on a scale rarely found in modern European politics. Russia deprived Poland of any chance of becoming the leader of the Slavic world and later, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union shaped the conditions under which modern Polish political culture developed. The struggle against Russian domination became one of the defining themes of Polish public life.

In effect, opposition to Russia helped create modern Polish identity, but it left the political elite with little ability to look at the world through any other prism. The result is the mindset of a sizeable European nation whose foreign policy imagination has room for almost nothing except the struggle against its great eastern neighbor.

The career of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American political thinker of Polish origin, embodied this drama. He wrote a series of striking works on international relations, but almost everything in them was subordinated to the Russian question, which meant his intellectual universe was large in appearance, but in practice revolved around one object.

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After the end of the Cold War, Poland’s entry into the Western world only reinforced this pattern. Warsaw could no longer openly pursue its traditional suspicions of Germany because NATO and the European Union confined those instincts within institutional limits. It’s true that Poland’s current rearmament program has a potential anti-German dimension, but it also reflects a desire to become Washington’s most important continental ally as Britain and France weaken. However, in the medium term, Poland’s hands are tied in the West by American interests in preserving NATO and the EU.

That leaves Russia and here the Polish elite feels entirely at home as, for two centuries, it has trained itself to think of little else. Now, however, reality is intruding because Kiev is behaving as Kiev was always likely to behave, taking Polish support for granted, glorifying figures whom many Poles regard as war criminals, and treating Warsaw not as a patron but as a useful subordinate.

Still, the current crisis is unlikely to produce a military clash between Poland and Ukraine, or even a genuine political break. Nor will it lead to a significant reduction in Polish support for Kiev and we can already see the dispute being presented as an internal Polish quarrel, a by-product of rivalry within Warsaw’s ruling elite. In this version, the problem isn’t Kiev’s conduct but Poland’s own domestic politics and this is convenient.

It allows Polish politicians to avoid confronting the failure of their strategy. After a few rounds of public argument, they will probably try to push the matter aside and return to business as usual. To do otherwise would mean admitting that Poland has no coherent foreign policy beyond its hostility to Russia.

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Kiev understands this perfectly and it has no reason to make concessions because Poland has backed itself into a corner. Warsaw cannot withdraw support from Ukraine without damaging the central myth of its own policy and therefore Kiev can continue to insult and ignore Polish sensitivities, confident that the aid will keep coming.

This is the deeper humiliation as Poland, unable to formulate a foreign policy that is not anti-Russian, inevitably becomes an instrument of other people’s interests. For many years these were primarily American and British interests, but now Poland also finds itself serving the interests of the Kiev regime, a government entirely dependent on outside support but still capable of dictating the emotional terms of its relationship with Warsaw.

All this is especially strange because Poland has no urgent need to behave this way given it’s one of the few major European countries whose economy is still growing at a steady pace, roughly 3.3 to 3.6 percent a year. A more self-confident country might have used this position to consolidate, enrich itself and avoid unnecessary geopolitical adventures.

But Poland can’t do that. A relatively large country must have a foreign policy and since Warsaw has no foreign policy idea except opposition to Russia, it will continue to move in circles.

That’s the trap Poland has built for itself. It imagined that Ukraine could be used as a weapon against Russia, but instead, it’s discovered that those who define themselves only by hostility to Moscow are easily used by others.

This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.

Three people have been injured after a Ukrainian drone struck a tourist bus traveling from Belarus to Russia’s Black Sea coast, officials from both countries said on Thursday.

The bus, carrying 19 passengers from the Belarusian capital Minsk to the resort city of Anapa, was hit near the Krasny Kamen border crossing in Russia’s Bryansk Region.

Acting Bryansk Region Governor Egor Kovalchuk said that the “Ukrainian terrorists” used an aircraft-type drone in what he described as a “targeted strike on civilians.”

The two Belarusian drivers suffered shrapnel wounds, while the Belarusian Health Ministry later reported that one passenger had also been injured. Emergency crews were dispatched to the scene.

Passengers were evacuated to a temporary accommodation center, where they received hot meals and psychological support. Belarusian citizens were later transported to the Gomel Region, while six Russian nationals remained at the facility in Bryansk Region.

The Krasny Kamen crossing was temporarily closed following the attack, causing long lines of cars and buses.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism case, accusing the Ukrainian military of carrying out another attack on civilians. Investigators said that they are working to identify the type and model of the drone used.

Minsk strongly condemned the strike. Belarusian MP Oleg Gaidukevich called it another attempt by Kiev to draw Belarus into the wider Russia-Ukraine conflict, but said that Belarus would not be provoked and that “everyone involved in terrorism and extremism will be held accountable.”

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The incident comes just over two weeks after another Ukrainian drone struck a bus carrying a Belarusian youth soccer team in Bryansk Region, killing the coach’s wife and injuring several others, including children.

Belarus described that attack as a “monstrous crime,” while President Alexander Lukashenko called it a deliberate provocation. Kiev denied responsibility.

The latest strike also follows a series of threats by Vladimir Zelensky against Belarus. Last month, he demanded that Minsk dismantle alleged drone relay stations near the border, warning that Kiev would destroy them if Belarus failed to act.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned Kiev against expanding the conflict, saying that Moscow is prepared to defend Belarus under their joint security pact, which includes the potential use of nuclear weapons.