Still, the deadly and seemingly indiscriminate strikes, while satisfying the bloodthirstiness of Russian hawks, carry some risk for Mr. Putin, not least because they clash with the Kremlin’s claims that Russia was not targeting Ukrainian civilians and was simply conducting a “special military operation.”
They could also put pressure on Mr. Putin to escalate further in the case of additional Ukrainian attacks or frontline successes, potentially increasing the discord within Russia’s ruling elite over how hard to push in Ukraine.
Indeed, pro-Kremlin figures, while celebrating the strikes, struggled to explain the incongruence of the fiery assault on cities that, in Mr. Putin’s telling, are core to Russia’s cultural heritage. Some justified the mayhem by blaming Ukraine and the West.
“It is bitter for us to see missile attacks on one of the most beautiful cities in the world, our Kyiv,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin commentator who is frequently on state television, wrote on Telegram. “All responsibility for the attacks on Kyiv lies with the occupiers and their collaborators. That is, on Biden and Zelensky personally.”
Inside Russia, few voices on Monday urged restraint. Even as the hawks praised the attacks, some lamented that Mr. Putin did not go far enough; Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president and current vice chairman of Mr. Putin’s Security Council, said on Telegram that the only way to protect Russia was to “completely dismantle” the government in Ukraine.
Some signs pointed to Mr. Putin’s being prepared for a wider escalation of the war. On Saturday, he appointed a general known for his ruthlessness, Sergei Surovikin, to lead the war effort in Ukraine. And Mr. Putin’s closest international ally, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, declared on Monday that thousands of Russian soldiers would soon arrive in the country to form a joint military group with Belarusian forces — creating the specter of a new threat to Ukraine’s north.
Vladimir B. Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist and lawyer, said Mr. Putin’s escalations “run counter to his own intuition” and seriously limit his policy options by backing him into a corner.
