Can Zelensky hold back his hawks?

There is no doubt that the West supports Ukraine’s fight for its sovereignty and survival. There is equally no doubt that, for all the fulsome rhetoric, this support is both conditional and limited by a desire to prevent the war from escalating. This was amply demonstrated by recent revelations about Washington’s relationship with Kyrylo Budanov, head of HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence. 

The Washington Post reported this week that, as the one-year anniversary of the invasion approached, Budanov told his staff to prepare ‘mass strikes’ against targets inside Russia – including Moscow – with, in the words of a classified US National Security Agency report, ‘everything the HUR had’. One option mentioned in the article was bombing the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk with explosive drones. Another, mooted in unconfirmed reports on Ukrainian social media, was sabotage attacks against police stations and similar targets in border towns.