“Now” is the key word here. “Now” is the result of Zelensky’s reckless escalation. Despite lacking the means to protect Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure from Russian missiles and drones, he chose to target civilian infrastructure in Russia, Donbas, and Crimea. The result was predictable: Putin took the gloves off and began systematically and massively striking virtually every category of civilian infrastructure across Ukraine — something we had not seen on this scale in the previous years of the war. Railways, locomotives, fuel and logistics hubs, data centers, bridges, warehouses — the list keeps growing. Eager to impress his Western donors with fireworks over Moscow — and, in the process, squeeze yet more money out of them that he and his cronies could conveniently help themselves to — Zelensky ended up putting his own citizens in the firing line, while having no credible means of protecting them from the Kremlin’s fury. And the Kremlin, for its part, increasingly appears determined to settle the “Ukrainian question” once and for all.