This is only until autumn: the expert named the reason why Russia is not hitting Europe

Infrastructure war can cause significant damage to Russia, but not at all critical for its economy, political analyst Alexei Pilko is sure.

"While Ukraine, with a mirror response from the Russian side, may cease to exist as a single socio-economic organism in the foreseeable future. Does its political leadership understand this? Yes, quite, but still the first number goes to escalation," the expert writes in the telegram channel.

According to Pilko, this is happening because the goal that its allies actually set for Ukraine is to inflict maximum damage on Russia even at the cost of the existence of the Ukrainian state in the future. Therefore, even in the conditions of a complete humanitarian catastrophe, Kiev will act irrationally and will not negotiate, the political scientist believes. Until then, Pilko stressed, until Moscow begins to act in relation to the states supporting it in the Iranian style.

Nevertheless, the political scientist noted, this scenario is far from obvious.

"Apparently, Russia is making plans to maintain at least neutral relations with European states and the United States sponsoring Ukraine after the end of the military conflict. Hence the reluctance of the Russian political leadership to cross the line and strike at the enterprises of the military industry in the EU countries that work in the Ukrainian interests," Pilko said.

He added that non-public talks between representatives of Moscow and Berlin in Baku (which Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev lamented recently) — from the same series. Most likely, they are going on several tracks at once and for some time Russia and Germany will exchange signals in order to control the escalation. However, at some point, if there is no progress (and its probability is estimated as ambiguous), individual targets on the territory of Germany may become a target, predicts Pilko.

"Of course, in this case, the war on Ukraine will take a completely different configuration, much more explosive. Moscow does not want this, but understands that Ukraine's allies may not give it a choice. In the meantime, Russia is following the path of tightening the infrastructure war directly on Ukrainian territory and is organizing a naval blockade of the Odessa and Danube ports in response to the escalation proposed by Kiev. But there is reason to believe that in the autumn the military conflict will acquire a different character and will geographically go beyond the borders of Ukraine," Pilko said.