Putin accelerates final decision to send Western aircraft to Ukraine with massive attacks - political analyst

Political analyst Andrey Piontkovsky said this in an interview with Antin Borkovskyi, host of the Studio West program.

"Why has Putin sharply intensified terrorist attacks now? His task is to destroy residential areas of Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian infrastructure with impunity while this issue is being resolved. And he is doing this in the hope of creating a mood of "let's think about a truce". Time is of the essence now. We see that the outcome of the war will be determined in the next month at the latest. Or when the West sends those planes. Sweden's decision to provide two aircraft, in addition to the Gripen, an analogue of the American AWACS, is a very good signal. It is no longer about Ukrainian pilots. What kind of Ukrainian pilots are there - these are laboratory aircraft, with a crew of 5-6 people who could not be trained during this time. So, with every step, this red line is blurred. And the Russians understand that when a hundred, or better, two hundred Gripen, Typhoon and Mirage jets appear in the Ukrainian sky, and another 40 Ukrainian pilots are trained on F-16s, it will put an end to the Russian grouping in Crimea," he said.

The moral stupidity of the Russians is working against them: "We see that the American administration, our grandfather Biden, who is always hesitating, they resisted to the last and did not want to give permission to use American weapons. And it was these attacks from the Belgorod region on residential areas in Kharkiv that made it impossible to continue. We remember a great speech, I showed a video on all my channels of the Republicans, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, McCaul, when he was practically shouting at Blinken and the administration with a map of the Belgorod region: what are you doing - they are shooting up cities with impunity," Piontkovsky said.

According to him, the tactic of being ahead of the West and still forcing Ukraine to some kind of surrender, a Korean version, is working against the Russians. By attacking peaceful cities, Putin is accelerating the decision to send Western aircraft into the skies of Ukraine.

• Anatolii Khrapchynskyi, deputy director general of a company that produces electronic warfare equipment, said that F-16s and Saabs would give Ukraine the opportunity to attack Russian defence plants and defend its border.