After Russia issued a warning to foreign diplomats, telling them to leave the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha has urged the Western partners not to yield to “Russian threats”. Late on Saturday night Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on the greater Kyiv area. Commentators, however, see the strikes as a sign of the Kremlin’s weakness. Rushing in without a planJOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Putin’s course of action smacks of nervousness, observes columnist Pierre Haski in France Inter (France): “Will Vladimir Putin, through this escalation and his rhetoric, be able to convince the Russian population that this war, which has now entered its fifth year, truly justifies the thousands of deaths, the economic sacrifices and now the destruction by Ukrainian drones? The Russian president is charging ahead on a course that will change neither the balance of power nor the fundamentals of the conflict. The real question is whether, if his failures continue to pile up, he will be tempted to cross red lines and expand the conflict. At the moment his threats speak mostly of his own nervousness.” The West no longer believes the threats Political scientist Viktor Taran observes on Facebook that the West now has more confidence in Ukraine’s strength (Ukraine): “The situation is the exact opposite of what it was on the eve of Russia’s large-scale invasion in February 2022. Back then, Western diplomatic missions left Kyiv en masse. Now, nothing remotely similar is happening. And that may be the most important indicator of how the world’s perception of Ukraine has changed. In 2022, the West feared that Kyiv would fall. In 2026, the West no longer believes Russia’s threats. The Kremlin has effectively lost one of its main instruments for exerting psychological pressure.”