Russia is preparing to escalate its air war against Ukraine after concluding that negotiations for a peace deal have collapsed entirely, according to three people close to the Kremlin cited by Bloomberg. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive, said Moscow is now weighing an intensification of powerful conventional ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, including strikes on the center of the Ukrainian capital, along with infrastructure targets in other cities across the country. The assessment marks a significant hardening of the Kremlin’s posture more than four years into the full-scale war Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022, and it comes as the diplomatic track pursued by the Trump administration shows no sign of producing a breakthrough.
According to the people close to the Kremlin, negotiation frameworks between Moscow and Kyiv have effectively collapsed, leaving both sides back where they started. Putin will not end the war under economic pressure from Western sanctions or from Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries and logistics networks, the people said. Moscow increasingly views Ukraine’s strikes as attacks orchestrated by NATO member states, since alliance countries continue to supply Kyiv with weapons and intelligence. The people said the current phase of hostilities does not represent the peak of possible military escalation, suggesting the Kremlin believes it retains significant room to intensify the war further.
Putin signaled his own intentions over the weekend in comments to a state television reporter, dismissing the toll that Ukrainian strikes have taken on the Russian economy. Ukraine “opened this Pandora’s box,” Putin said, adding a direct warning: “Well, be ready to get a blowback on your most sensitive sectors of the economy.”
The stalled diplomacy traces back to an understanding the Kremlin believed it had reached with President Donald Trump at their summit in Alaska last August. That arrangement would have required the United States to pressure Ukraine into surrendering its eastern Donetsk region as part of a broader deal to end the war. Ukraine has consistently rejected Putin’s demand that it hand over a fortified belt of cities in Donetsk that Russian forces have failed to capture despite fighting there since 2014. The Kremlin has now abandoned reliance on that understanding altogether, according to the people close to Putin’s government.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear in June that Washington did not share Russia’s interpretation of the Alaska summit, stating plainly, “if there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war.” Following subsequent talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Philippines in July, Rubio said “new concepts” were needed to move the process forward.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare visit to Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Russian counterparts, though the substance of those discussions remains unclear. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the purpose of the trip was to warn Russia against attacking NATO member countries, citing people briefed on the visit. U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been expected to travel to Moscow after an eight-month gap in engagement, and to visit Kyiv for the first time, but no date has emerged for either trip.
In the absence of active diplomacy, Moscow sees few alternatives to further escalation in pursuit of its war aims, according to four people close to the Kremlin. While Russia holds out hope that Witkoff and Kushner will eventually arrive in Moscow with new proposals, expectations for any breakthrough are described as very low. The Kremlin believes it has already made concessions throughout the war, and that each one has weakened Russia’s negotiating position, according to two of the people. Moscow regards the Alaska summit itself as another compromise that ultimately failed to deliver results. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The reported escalation comes as Ukraine marked the 35th anniversary of its independence on August 24 by hosting a Coalition of the Willing summit in Kyiv, chaired jointly by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alongside British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Leaders from roughly 30 nations, including all European Union member states, NATO representatives, and the leaders of Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, took part. In their joint statement, the coalition condemned what it called Russia’s “systematic and escalating strikes” against Ukrainian cities, infrastructure, and civilians, which it said have caused the highest number of civilian casualties since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, including damage to a children’s hospital in Kyiv the previous week.
Zelenskyy told reporters following the summit that he was direct with attendees about the state of negotiations. “Many of the leaders who spoke today are genuinely sceptical about whether Putin is willing to engage in any negotiations at this point,” Zelenskyy said. He announced that Ukraine would receive new military and energy aid packages from coalition members, with a particular focus on strengthening air defense capabilities.
The scale of the mismatch between Ukraine’s needs and its available defenses has become one of Zelenskyy’s most urgent public arguments in recent weeks. Speaking to CNN on August 12, he said Kyiv has only a tenth of the ballistic missile interceptors it requires to protect its cities. “If [Washington] sells us 5 percent [of its current missile stash], we will go through the winter and save people’s lives. If they can sell us 10 percent, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles,” Zelenskyy said.
That shortage has been laid bare repeatedly on the ground. July was the deadliest month of the war since May 2022, with Russia launching 376 missiles compared with 288 in March and 192 in July 2025, alongside nearly 5,000 long- and short-range drones and hundreds of guided glide bombs. On August 20, a Russian missile attack on Kyiv killed at least 13 people, including a child, and damaged a children’s hospital during a nine-hour assault the capital had been bracing for. “Unfortunately, while Moscow is investing in ballistic missiles and escalation, the world does not always respond appropriately to such attacks,” Zelenskyy said following that strike.
Also on August 20, Zelenskyy underscored the direct link between the interceptor shortage and Moscow’s calculus for peace. “As long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistic defense, Russia will not consider peace seriously,” he wrote on X, adding that Patriot interceptors “cannot yet be replaced” and that Ukraine needs them urgently.
Beyond the missile campaign, Russia and Ukraine have each intensified strikes deep into the other’s territory in recent months. Ukraine has targeted Russian oil refineries, triggering widespread fuel shortages inside Russia, and has struck warehouses belonging to e-commerce giants Wildberries and Ozon, inflicting billions of dollars in damage on Russian logistics networks. Both countries have also stepped up attacks on commercial ships and ports in the Black Sea, raising concern over the impact on global grain markets; Russia and Ukraine together account for more than a quarter of world wheat exports, and the exchange of attacks is unfolding in the middle of this year’s harvest.
Perhaps most alarming to Western officials, a growing number of Russian officials are reportedly concluding that Putin could eventually turn to tactical nuclear weapons as a last resort in Ukraine, according to the people close to the Kremlin. The volume of hawkish chatter in Moscow advocating such a step has increased recently, and an extreme response is viewed inside Russian circles as plausible because the only outcome worse than continuing the war for Putin would be losing it. Tactical nuclear weapons carry smaller warheads and shorter ranges than strategic missiles and are designed to affect a specific battlefield rather than destroy an entire city, though their explosive yields can still be enormous and their fallout can contaminate large areas of land. There is, to be clear, no indication that Russia is currently preparing to fire nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and using one would break a taboo on wartime nuclear use that has held since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.
Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as a national security adviser to three U.S. presidents including Trump during his first term, said Putin sees no organized resistance capable of stopping him. “For Putin there is no sign of collective will anywhere to resist him and so many ways in which he can grind people down,” Hill said. “This is why a concerted collective and consistent effort to resist his actions, and to engage in diplomacy, is essential. He has a singleminded focus and we are all over the place.” Hill said the Biden administration had effectively warned Russia of a massive U.S. conventional response if nuclear weapons were used in the war, but said it is doubtful Trump would issue the same warning. Putin, she said, is testing how far he can and needs to go before people give in to him.
Key Russian partners have separately warned Putin against crossing the nuclear threshold. China relayed a message to Moscow urging it not to even consider detonating tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy and a senior European official who disclosed the communication last month. Putin is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan next week, a gathering that will place him alongside two of the partners who have counseled restraint.
Alexander Gabuev, the Berlin-based director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the likelihood of Russia actually resorting to tactical nuclear weapons remains low for now, given the limited military value of such weapons on a dispersed modern battlefield and the high political cost of breaking the nuclear taboo. “As long as Moscow has room to escalate with conventional weapons, including by intensifying missile strikes, it has little incentive to cross the nuclear threshold,” Gabuev said.
The reported shift comes as Ukraine’s war against Russia enters its fifth year, with Kyiv also pressing allies for financial support to sustain its military. Zelenskyy told the Coalition of the Willing summit that Ukraine faces a $27 billion budget deficit and urged the European Union to speed delivery of a promised 90 billion euro, or roughly $105 billion, loan to cover the shortfall for 2026. He also thanked Washington for what he called its “unwavering bipartisan and bicameral support,” pointing to continued efforts in both chambers of Congress to increase pressure on Russia, including legislation led by Senator Lindsey Graham targeting Russia and Iran with additional sanctions.