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The war in Ukraine has been grinding on for 22 months now, with tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. In all that time, with all that loss, the battle lines have barely budged. But last weekend, Russia tried to take a sledgehammer to that stalemate. I asked Slate’s Fred Kaplan what happened.

“Russia usually launches a few rockets at a time, or maybe a dozen is a lot. They launched something like 180 rockets all at once,” he said. “If somebody had guessed the day before whether Russia even had that many missiles ready to go, they might have doubted it.”

Dozens were reportedly killed in this attack. Afterward, Ukraine fired its own rockets into Russian territory as retaliation. They also killed civilians. It seemed to me like a new kind of escalation after two years of day-to-day battle on the ground. One security expert said that it wasn’t just the sheer number of missiles Russia fired that surprised them, it was the way they seemed to elude any defense, with some flying in circles before looping around to their targets.

“It was coordinated across the entire stretch of the Russia–Ukraine border. In other words, it indicates that Russia still has some kind of integrated command system,” Kaplan said. “We’re beginning to realize that Russia has a lot more reserves than anybody thought, not just in weapons, but in manpower. It is a military that has begun to learn some lessons of its failures in the past and has made adjustments, which means they could last longer than had been calculated.”

As Russia’s Ukraine war enters a new phase, we spoke to Kaplan on a recent episode of What Next about whether the West will come up with the cash to hold Putin off. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mary Harris: What would you say the state of play in Ukraine is right now?

Fred Kaplan: The state of play is still a stalemate, but at more intense and more highly destructive levels.

What do you mean by that?

Well, if you’re looking at how much territory has been captured, that has been almost unchanged for the last nine months, and it continues to be essentially unchanged. Ukraine might take over a town, or Russia might take over a town, but it’s kind of a net zero. On the other hand, Ukraine has started to step out of its former limits. It used to hold back on attacking targets inside Russia. Now, there are actual rocket attacks, like the attack on Belgorod—this was clearly stuff fired from Ukraine.

This attack on Belgorod, this happened right after the blitz on Ukraine.

It was in response. In other words, it was: “OK, we are going to show you that we still know how to play asymmetrical warfare. You fire 150 missiles at cities. Well, we go after something in Russia.” This is stepping up the battle. This is: “You’re not respecting our borders. We’re not respecting yours anymore either.”

Does that concern you? Because you mentioned how when you’re attacking inside Russia, it becomes something potentially bigger, potentially drawing in more combatants.

These red lines are subtle to the point of questioning whether they’re meaningful. The U.S. has always said that U.S. weapons will not be used for that purpose, which was one reason why, for quite a long time, President Biden was reluctant to ship long-range missiles to Ukraine. They didn’t want to give them a missile from which they could hit Russian targets. Well, he let up on........

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