The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) warns that the Kremlin is likely preparing an information base to expand Russian demands for Ukraine and NATO, News.bg reports.
The analysis was prompted by a statement by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on March 11. In response to a question about whether Russia remains committed to the proposals from the 2022 Istanbul talks, he said that “the entire reality has changed“.
Russian state media presented his words as a signal that the old proposals are no longer relevant, but did not specify what exactly Peskov meant by “new reality“. According to ISW, this may be an attempt by Moscow to prepare the ground for setting new conditions.
Similar positions have been expressed by other Russian officials. The chairman of the Russian Federation Council's international relations committee, Grigory Karasin, said that the 2022 proposals were already "irrelevant" because four years had passed, and the Ukrainian leadership, according to him, remained "unwilling to negotiate."
Meanwhile, on March 10, Ukrainian forces launched a strike with Storm Shadow cruise missiles against the "Kremniy El" microchip plant in Bryansk. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that the attack caused serious damage to production facilities.
A regiment of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces announced that this was the first strike on a strategic Russian defense industry facility using a drone for real-time fire correction, which allowed for effective targeting of the target with a limited number of missiles.
An open-source intelligence analyst reported on March 11 that satellite imagery following the attack showed five hits on Building No. 4 of the plant, with the damage likely to force the shutdown of the workshop. The “Kremniy El“ claims to be the second largest manufacturer of microchips for the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The Russian Foreign Ministry described the attack as a strike on civilian targets and said that Ukraine could not have carried out such an operation without intelligence assistance from the United Kingdom and other NATO countries. Moscow presented the strike as an attempt by Western countries to sabotage trilateral talks between the United States, Ukraine and Russia.
These accusations were repeated by Peskov, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova and other representatives of the Russian government, including deputies of the State Duma.
At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on March 10 that Germany had delivered an unspecified number of PAC-3 interceptors to Ukraine for Patriot air defense systems.
According to him, the delivery is part of a total of 35 air defense missiles promised to Kiev by international partners during the last Ramstein format meeting, held on February 13.