Russian nationalist commentators lauded the strikes as an appropriate response to Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive and the attack on Kerch Bridge 

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Moscow’s barrage of missile strikes on cities all across Ukraine has elicited celebratory comments from Russian officials and pro-Kremlin pundits, who in recent weeks have actively criticized the Russian military for a series of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield.

Russian nationalist commentators and state media’s war correspondents lauded Monday’s attack as an appropriate, and long-awaited, response to Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in the northeast and the south and a weekend attack on a key bridge between Russia and Crimea, the prized Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed in 2014.

Many argued, however, that Moscow should keep up the intensity of Monday’s missile strikes in order to win the war now. Some analysts suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin is becoming a hostage of his own allies’ views on how the campaign in Ukraine should unfold.

“Putin’s initiative is weakening and he is becoming more dependent on circumstances and those who are forging the ‘victory’ (in Ukraine) for him,” Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think-tank, wrote in an online commentary Monday.

“The fear of defeat is so strong, especially for those who are now fully immersed in this military venture, that Putin’s indecisiveness, with his logic of ‘we have not started anything yet’ and ‘restrained tactics have paid off’ has become a problem,” the analyst said.

Putin’s supporters have been calling for drastic steps on the Ukraine battlefield for weeks. These calls intensified over the weekend, shortly after an explosion on the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia sent shock waves around the globe. The bridge, Europe’s longest, is a prominent symbol of Russian military might and was opened by Putin himself in 2018. 

“And?” Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-funded RT television, wondered on social media about Moscow’s response to the attack on the bridge.

“This is one of those cases when the country needs to show we can hit back,” wrote Alexander Kots, a war correspondent for Russia’s popular pro-Kremlin tabloid, Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“It is time for fighting! Fiercely, even cruelly. Without looking back at whatever censures from the West,” Sergei Mironov, a senior Russian lawmaker who leads the state-backed A Just Russia party tweeted Saturday. “There won’t be any bigger sanctions. They won’t say any worse words. We need to do our thing. We started it — we should go till the end. There is no way back. Time to respond!” The response came on Monday morning, with Moscow launching dozens of missiles at Ukrainian cities simultaneously, killing and wounding scores and inflicting unprecedented damage on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. The strikes, which hit 15 Ukrainian cities,