After Russia fired a barrage of missiles at Ukraine on Monday and Belarus issued fresh threats against Kyiv, President Vladimir Putin is trying to escalate the nearly eight-month war and make up for humiliating recent casualties, Western analysts say.

According to Ukrainian authorities, 41 of 75 rockets were intercepted, but the rest hit cities across the country, including the capital Kyiv and western Lviv, near the border with Poland.

Putin warned Ukraine he was ready to authorize more “heavy” attacks, while Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that “the first episode has been played. There will be more.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres condemned the strikes as “another unacceptable escalation”, while French leader Emmanuel Macron called them “a profound change in the nature of this war”.

Analysts said the strikes appeared to be in response to an explosion Saturday on the Kerch Bridge, which connects the occupied Crimea peninsula with Russia and was inaugurated by Putin himself in 2018.

Jordan Bozhilov, director of the Bulgarian think tank Sofia Security Forum, called the explosion that brought down one of the sections of the road “the first personal humiliation for Putin”.

The attack – which was not claimed by Ukraine but was immediately blamed by Russia on Kyiv – came after major battlefield setbacks for Russian troops around Lyman in north-eastern Ukraine and Kherson in the south in recent weeks.

“Russia has shown that it can still escalate the conflict, but it can only escalate by attacking more and more civilian targets,” said Wojciech Lorenz, head of the international security program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

“The Russian regime has been pressured by its own propagandists and some opinion-makers to demonstrate that it is capable of responding to Ukrainian offensives,” he told AFP.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, also issued fresh threats against Kyiv on Monday, raising fears he may be preparing to finally join Russia’s offensive against its neighbor.

Lukashenko has granted Russia the use of its territory but refuses to send troops directly into battle.

He said Monday he had agreed to deploy “a regional grouping” that would shuffle Russian and Belarusian troops, but did not say where they would be sent.

“I am skeptical that Belarus will enter the conflict. Belarusian troops are mainly concerned with repressing their own people,” said William Alberque, a military expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.

Lorenz said he also had doubts about Belarus’ direct involvement, but said that “Ukraine needs to devote some resources to defending its border.”

“It is better to concentrate these resources in the east (against Russia) without having to spare thousands of troops in the west and north,” he said.

Forcing Belarus to become more involved, raising nuclear threats and increasing the brutality of attacks on Ukraine are seen as some of the few short-term options available to Putin if he seeks to change the dynamics of the battlefield.

Alberque viewed Monday’s rocket attacks as part of Putin’s strategy to increase pressure on Ukraine and the West.

“Russia has entered a cycle of shock and peak violence. It started with mobilization and annexation, then nuclear threats, and now indiscriminate attacks on civilians,” he said.

Despite recent setbacks, Putin officially annexed four Ukrainian regions at the end of September and ordered a partial mobilization of up to 300,000 men.

“Putin is trying both to put pressure on Ukrainian society by destroying power plants and civilian infrastructure, and to put pressure on Western countries to try to undermine their unity,” added Bozhilov of the Sofia Security Forum.

Attacks on civilians also help him “present himself as someone who is ready for anything”.

But Lorenz stressed that large-scale missile attacks like Monday’s by Russian forces could not be repeated on a regular basis and that Western nations are now likely to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses to help protect major cities.

“Russia’s precision strike capabilities are limited and due to international sanctions, it is able to rebuild them quickly,” he said.

“It can make a show of force, but because its resources are exhausted, it’s just a gesture.”