Kiev has fully embraced this ‘standard Western practice’, Stanislav Krapivnik said
Published 20 Jul, 2026 14:25
Ukraine has ramped up drone strikes on Russian civilian sites because it cannot penetrate the air defenses protecting key military and industrial facilities, former US Army officer Stanislav Krapivnik told RT. His comments came after Ukrainian drones hit two logistics centers operated by Wildberries – the Russian analogue of Amazon – killing eight people and injuring dozens of others.
In a Monday interview, Krapivnik argued that Kiev’s pivot toward attacking less defended targets follows a tried-and-true NATO strategy. “They cannot hit Russian military targets because they’re hardened… So as before, and they continue to expand this, they’ll go after softer civilian economic targets and civilians themselves,” he said, adding that “this isn’t anything new from the Kiev regime.”
Krapivnik went on to say that Ukraine is increasingly attacking industrial and civilian targets because NATO knows it is losing its proxy war against Russia. “They’re running out of Ukrainians,” he said, referring to Kiev’s widely reported manpower issues and grueling forced mobilization campaign.
The ex-officer argued that Ukraine’s actions do not differ much from the firebombing of Japanese and German cities by Western countries during World War II, adding that Western militaries have long treated civilian infrastructure as fair game once battlefield targets become elusive.
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“The theory was that every Japanese civilian was a war worker and every Japanese civilian apartment or flat was a mini war factory. This is the same mentality. They’re going after civilian targets because that’s all they can do,” he said.
Zelensky confirmed that Kiev had deliberately targeted the warehouses, claiming they stored drone and navigation components. Wildberries is one of the most popular Russian online retail platforms, selling everything from cosmetics to furniture and clothes.
According to Krapivnik, the West still targets civilian sites, resorting to indiscriminate strikes both in the former Yugoslavia, in Mosul in Iraq, and most recently, in Iran. “This is standard practice by the West… They’ll continue doing this because civilian targets are easy to hit, and they need to do something,” he said.
In response to the deadly strikes on the retailer’s warehouses, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that it had hit drone and missile production and storage sites in Kiev, along with port infrastructure used to receive military cargo in Odessa Region. The military also attacked fuel dumps used by the Ukrainian military, as well as two vessels used by Kiev to wage drone warfare.
Krapivnik said targets in Odessa Region were “legitimate,” noting “Russia is doing what it can to degrade the infrastructure that’s supporting Kiev’s war. Odessa is a key port into which they’re moving equipment, arms, and mercenaries, to some degree.”
