At the same time, since civilians are the target, these strikes constitute a war crime, Saks told ERR.

Russia has been conducting waves of major air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities over the past 10 days, with dozens of deaths resulting and hundreds more people being injured. The latest large-scale strike, involving both missiles and drones, came just last night, overnight into Tuesday morning.

Saks said Russia has previously attacked Ukrainian cities and specifically residential areas at times when Russian forces were experiencing difficulties on the front line in its invasion of Ukraine, adding the recent strikes are no different.

"Whether it is their ships having been sunk or the Ukrainian army making advances at the front, this is not an entirely new tactic. What is new this time is that Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly announced it as a separate campaign involving missile strikes. He refers to them as retaliatory attacks, but the war has already been going on for four years—so what exactly is there left to retaliate for? This is a full-scale offensive campaign against civilian infrastructure and population, something which constitutes a war crime," Saks said.

"At the strategic level, Russia has once again begun to lose the initiative, and it is this which is what actually concerns them the most," he went on.

In addition to Putin's campaign announcements, Russia's Foreign Ministry recently issued statements urging foreign nationals and diplomats to leave Kyiv. To cap things off, last Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Russia intended to strike key Ukrainian centers, imploring Washington to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv.

Russia had been engaged in similar behavior right at the beginning of its full-scale invasion too. There are now two main reasons for continuing down this route, Saks said. First, to draw the U.S. back to the negotiating table, and second, because Russia's leadership wants to amplify the impact of its air strikes in order to generate greater global media coverage. Civilian casualties do not enter into the equation here, however, Saks went on.

"The number of civilian casualties is what guarantees sufficient media attention for Russia, creating the impression that it still has the capacity to press on with the war. This is also the purpose of these notifications to the United States, that an attack is on its way—they are intended to ensure broader and more intensive media coverage, more official statements, while the more statements there are, the better, and so on," Saks explained.

At the same time, the expert noted that air strikes on this scale are extremely costly, not to mention militarily pointless.

"There is no very clear picture of how many missiles Russia is actually capable of producing, but what is certain is that these missiles are extremely expensive. From a military standpoint, these attacks are essentially a waste of money since they do not provide Russia with any meaningful military advantage," Saks said.

Saks noted that if Russia truly had enough of a stockpile of missiles, it would conduct missile strikes on Ukraine every day of the week and try to press home victory as quickly as possible.

"They simply cannot produce enough of these to render the scale of air attacks completely unbearable to Ukraine," he said.

According to Saks, Russia will, however, certainly not achieve its goals here. Forcing Ukraine to make concessions in any negotiations as a result of strikes like those seen recently will not work out, Saks added.

The return of the U.S. to the negotiation table is vital to Russia, as it has given Moscow at least some leeway in influencing the scale of military aid and weapons deliveries provided to Ukraine, while at the same time preserving the option of using the negotiation format to reach at least some agreements with Ukraine, Saks continued.

"Russia does not want to wage this war entirely without negotiations either. They also understand that, at some point, the fighting will have to end, and it is better if there is some functioning framework already in place when that takes place. Sometimes the need arises to end hostilities quickly, or at least to consolidate or take a pause, and to do that it is useful to have some form of negotiation format available," Saks concluded.

Last night's Russian missile and drone strikes alone killed at least 18 people across Ukraine overnight, including two children, the BBC reported. This makes the overnight events one of Moscow's largest assaults on Ukraine in recent months.

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