Vladimir Putin has spent more than £1 billion since Monday carrying out an intense wave of attacks on Ukraine.
Over the last few days, Russia has sent drones and missiles into more than half of Ukraine’s regions, killing at least seven people and damaging many civilian power facilities.
The UK’s representative to the UN, James Kariuki, explained that Russia’s “cowardly” air strikes have cost the Kremlin almost £1.14bn, a number calculated by Forbes Ukraine and Ekonmichna Pravda.
Russia’s strikes – the largest of the war so far – appear to be a rebuttal to Ukraine’s three-week-old incursion into the Kursk region.
The unexpected offensive from Ukrainian troops infuriated Moscow, but Putin is still focusing his own forces on taking Ukraine’s Donetsk region rather than moving them to defend Russia’s own land.
Speaking at the UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Kariuki said: “Russia is getting increasingly desperate.”
Recalling that estimates suggest more than 1,000 Russian troops were either killed or wounded on Monday alone, he added: “The consequence of Putin’s miscalculation for the Russian people is increasingly evident.”
The representative also pointed out the attacks show “continued evidence” Russia is purposefully targeting civilian energy infrastructure, noting: “Intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects constitute a war crime.”
Top US spy – deputy CIA director David Cohen – also said on Wednesday that Putin will encounter a “difficult fight” if he tried to launch a counteroffensive to retake Kursk as Ukrainian troops are building up defensive lines there.
He also suggested the Russian president needed to directly address with the incursion quickly, or face the consequences.
Cohen claimed that Putin “is not only going to have to face the fact that there is a front line now within Russian territory that he’s going to have to deal with, he has to deal with reverberations back in his own society that they have lost a piece of Russian territory.”
Meanwhile, Moscow has once again dismissed Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s claim that he has a plan to end the war.
In a news conference on Wednesday, the Ukrainian president said the three-week incursion into Russia was part of the strategy to force the Kremlin to withdraw.
However, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “This is not the first time that we have heard such statements from representatives of the Kyiv regime, We are aware of the nature of this Kyiv regime.
“We are continuing our special military operation and will achieve all of our goals.”
He said it is “more than obvious” there was no foundation for peace talks right now, although he bizarrely agreed with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi that a peaceful settlement was needed.