Vladimir Putin is under pressure to formally declare war on Ukraine by Russian hardliners who argue his “special military operation” has not gone far enough.
Anger grew after Ukraine smuggled dozens of drones into Russia on the back of freight trucks and launched a surprise attack on Moscow’s prized nuclear bombers on June 1.
“Shock and outrage” is how one high-ranking Russian official described the mood in the Kremlin the day after Kyiv’s surprise strikes. Another Russian official told The Telegraph: “Like every thinking patriot, I took it as a personal tragedy.”
The fury ran so deep in some quarters that there were renewed calls for Putin to “declare war” on Ukraine – a demand that may seem baffling to Western observers, given that the conflict is in its fourth year and is Europe’s bloodiest since the Second World War.
But amongst Russia’s hardline nationalist elite, there is growing belief that Putin has not gone far enough, that he should formally declare war, recruit a million more men, and wipe out Volodymyr Zelensky’s government with daily missile strikes on Kyiv.
The Telegraph spoke to Kremlin insiders to assess whether Ukraine’s drone attack – dubbed Operation Spider’s Web – might push Russia to escalate even further. All agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
“Explosions, drones, sabotage, and possibly even terrorist attacks are what the future may hold for us if the Zelensky regime is not completely destroyed,” said a current high-ranking Russian government official.
He described himself as hawkish and admitted sympathising with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner warlord who led a failed mutiny against Putin in June 2023 and was later killed in a plane crash.
“If Ukraine ceases to exist in its current form, the criminal underground will be demoralised,” he claimed.
Yet despite the scale of Ukraine’s strike, which damaged at least 20 Russian nuclear bombers, according to US estimates, the Kremlin has so far stuck to a more cautious approach.
“This did not catalyse a political discussion or a change in the format of military operations,” said a former senior Kremlin official who once directed operations against Ukraine.
Traditionally, opposition to Putin has come from liberal critics. But since the invasion, a new breed of nationalist opposition has emerged – figures who claim the Russian president is too cautious.
The roots of this anger go back to 2014, when some hardliners accused Putin of failing to fully support Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. One of the most prominent is Igor Girkin – also known as Strelkov – a former FSB officer and leading figure in the “Angry Patriots”, a faction demanding Ukraine’s total destruction.
To most in the West, the conflict is clearly a war. But Putin still refers to it as a “special military operation” – a distinction that matters to Russia’s hawks.
