Professor Roman Sheremeta

Why Russia Is Bombing Kyiv Harder Than Ever

The answer is not complicated and cynical. It is incentives.

ROMAN SHEREMETA

MAY 25, 2026

Kyiv burned last night.

For most of seven hours, between 1 a.m. and dawn, russia launched roughly 600 drones, 90 cruise missiles, and an Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile at Ukraine. Most of the barrage was aimed at Kyiv. By morning, at least four people were dead, over hundred were wounded. The Chornobyl Museum – the museum devoted to humanity’s worst nuclear disaster – was destroyed. One of Kyiv’s oldest open-air markets burned down. Apartment buildings, schools, and a shopping center lay in ruins. American University Kyiv, where I have been a Founding Rector for two years, was damaged.

According to Ukraine’s air force, it was one of the largest combined missile and drone attacks since the full-scale invasion began.

This was not military strategy. It was terror.

And the question the world should be asking is the one Ukrainians have been forced to ask themselves every night for years: why has russian bombing of Ukrainian cities intensified again?

The answer is not complicated and cynical. It is incentives.

1. The world got tired of the war

When russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine was everywhere – every front page, every channel, every speech. The world watched in horror as russian missiles struck hospitals, theaters, and train stations full of refugees.

But wars that last years disappear from public attention. Today, Ukraine receives a fraction of the coverage it once did. There are new wars, new crises, new distractions. Many people have, in the comfortable sense available to people who are not being bombed, moved on.

Ukrainians have not moved on. They cannot. They are still being bombed every night. Children are still being pulled from rubble.

And Putin understands something the rest of the world keeps forgetting: war crimes become easier to commit when fewer people are watching. Terror thrives in silence.

2. Trump changed Putin’s incentives

It is not a coincidence that russian attacks have intensified in the months since the United States changed its posture toward this war.

Trump promised to end the war in twenty-four hours. He did not. What he did instead was signal to the Kremlin that the political cost of escalation was falling. He echoed russian narratives. He attacked Ukraine while praising Putin. He stopped American support for Kyiv. He suspended critical aid, intelligence cooperation, and sanctions enforcement against the russian oil exports that fund the war.

Each of those signals was received in Moscow exactly as it was intended to be received.

Dictators pay very close attention to incentives. When aggression is punished, they grow cautious. When aggression is tolerated, they escalate. This is not opinion. It is the lesson of every European catastrophe of the twentieth century.

Chamberlain believed compromise would satisfy Hitler. It did not. It convinced Hitler that Europe lacked the will to resist him. Putin has been an attentive student of that history. He has watched the West negotiate with itself while he negotiates with no one.

3. Russian oil money becomes Russian missiles

The mechanical consequences of weakened pressure are visible from space.

Restrictions on russian oil have eased. Billions of dollars continue flowing into the Kremlin’s war machine. Those billions become missiles. They become Shahed drones. They become the Oreshnik that struck Bila Tserkva last night.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air defenses are stretched thinner than at any point in the war. Patriot interceptors are not arriving fast enough. Every delayed system costs lives. Every hesitation in Washington is felt in a Kyiv apartment building at 2 a.m.

4. Russia’s strategy is overwhelming volume

Russia’s plan is to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses through sheer mass. Six hundred drones in one night. Ninety missiles. Simultaneous strikes across multiple cities.

Even the world’s best air defense can be exhausted. Ukraine has performed extraordinarily, intercepting most of what russia throws at it. But no country can absorb this scale of assault forever without sustained help from its partners.

5. This is not strength. It is desperation.

For all the horror of last night, what happened over Kyiv is not a display of russian strength. It is the opposite.

Putin has failed in nearly every major objective of this war. He failed to take Kyiv in three days. He failed to break Ukrainian resistance, divide Ukrainian society, or destroy Ukrainian identity. He failed to intimidate Europe into submission. His losses in men and materiel are catastrophic. His economy is increasingly distorted by war spending. Ukrainian drones now strike oil depots, military bases, and infrastructure deep inside russia almost nightly.

Putin is trapped inside the war he started. And dictators who begin losing control respond the way dictators always respond: they bomb civilians. They target apartment buildings. They try to spread fear because fear is the last weapon they still fully control.

This is not the behavior of a confident empire. It is the violent convulsion of a regime that increasingly understands its own failure.

Ukraine will endure

Russia wants the world to believe that Ukraine is exhausted. That resistance is hopeless. That freedom is too expensive.

But Ukrainians know what people in comfortable countries have begun to forget – that some things are more important than comfort, more important than fear, even more important than life. Freedom. Dignity. The right to exist as a nation on the land where you have always lived.

That is why Ukraine continues to fight. That is why Ukraine will endure.

Slava Ukraini.

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Professor. Economist. Founder. Author. Writing about geopolitics, Ukraine, power, and how decisions shape the world.

Comment from :

Sam Arie

Roman, everything you write here is true. We can only hope that our world leaders come to understand the same thing. Keep writing and keep doing what you do. May peace somehow return fast. Slava Ukraini. 🇺🇦 🇬🇧

LadyHistorian

Heroiam Slava, dearest Ukrainians. Never doubt that your cause is just.

DW Phillips 

Yes to every point. Thank you Roman.

Roman Sheremeta

Thank you friend!

Ann-Marie Noleygirl

PUTIN IS A DEADMAN WALKING. THIS EVIL IS THE LAST GASP OF HIS FAILURE AS A HUMAN BEING DEFINED BY AN EVIL SOUL.

Alexa Murray 

God grant you strength to withstand what you must to give your precious children the future they deserve.

Michael Walther 

Anyone who has delved deeply into Russian history understands that Putin must win this war. It is not about Crimea or the Donbas; nor is it about NATO.

It is about a centuries-old, uninterrupted system of rule.

A small elite group governs the country unchecked. The elites change, but the system endures.

Russia has never been merely a country—a nation—but always an empire; and when empires fall, the imperial center attempts to halt that collapse. Dien Bien Phu and the Algerian War serve as examples.

Rick Glass

DOWN WITH THAT LITTLE BASTARD! PUTIN WILL SOON PAY FOR HIS SINS, AND HATRED IN RUSSIA WILL BE WIPED OUT IN LESS THAN A CENTURY.

Condo 

Of course it is desperation in the form of retaliation against the increasingly efficient Ukrainian offensive over Russian assets. Using Oreshniks is like shooting last bullets

https://romansheremeta.substack.com/p/why-russia-is-bombing-kyiv-harder?r=17e8q4&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

……….,,,,,,

Today’s massive attack on Kyiv is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of desperation.

This is what the convulsions of a dying regime look like.

Putin is trapped in the war he started himself. He failed to break Ukraine in three days. He failed to divide the West. He failed to destroy the Ukrainian spirit. And now, with russian losses mounting, the economy bleeding, military targets across russia increasingly under attack, and Ukraine continuing to resist after years of terror, the Kremlin is lashing out blindly in rage.

That is what dictators do when they realize they are losing control.

They bomb civilians. They fire missiles at apartment buildings. They try to spread fear because fear is the only thing left for them.

But every attack only proves one thing: Putin understands that he is losing.

These are not the actions of a confident empire. These are the violent spasms before collapse.

Ukraine will endure.
Ukraine will win.
Slava Ukraini.

………………..

Last week, Franklin Graham suggested that people pray for Putin. Not for God to remove this evil man from power. Not for him to stop the genocide of the Ukrainian people. Not for him to confess his sins and repent. But simply for his wellbeing and wisdom.

What you are witnessing in Kyiv today is the result of such “prayers.” Yes, first and foremost, I blame Putin for this evil. But I also blame Franklin Graham and his supporters who, under the cover of “preaching the Gospel,” have blessed this genocidal regime.

If you want to pray for Putin, pray that God removes this evil man from power. Pray that God crushes the demonic spirit that has gripped all of russia. Pray that Putin confesses his sins before God and turns away from his genocidal war. Pray that Ukrainian children are returned to their families, prisoners are freed, and the killing stops.

Pray for justice to be done.

…………………

Trump gave Putin a green light to do whatever he wants to Ukraine. And so Putin did.

It is not a coincidence that russia carpet-bombed Ukrainian cities right after the United States suspended trilateral talks with russia and Ukraine and removed sanctions on russian oil.

…………….

When you look at the burning buildings in Ukraine, don’t forget that behind each building there are families, parents, and children.

Russia’s purpose is to eliminate the Ukrainian people, erase their identity, and destroy their future.