I think is a bit of a desperate move and change of tactics. They've tried to rally support to be able to conventionally push back Russia on their turf, but that failed for multiple reasons, like the slow drip feeding of gear. Ukraine cannot reach critical masses like that.
I also think it's a matter of a shift in support. The "red line" has been moved over and over again. Remember the raids of the pro Ukraine Russian troops into Russia? Some of them used HMMVs and that got some backlash from the US already. Generally back then the common consensus was to not use any western gear on Russian soil, only on the occupied Ukrainian one. Now we see more and more countries loosening their stance and allow Ukraine to strike Russia within their borders using their weapons.
So now they can do something they couldn't really do before, and they're trying new things to hurt the enemy and potentially get some leverage out of it.
It may have just been a matter of opportunity, too. You can bet the Ukrainians have a lot of eyes in Russia, and will be able to see if they leave a flank open.
It also forces Russia into a defensive war where they have already committed all their forces for an Offensive war. This will force Russia to either give up parts of Russia, or withdraw troops from Ukraine to retake parts of Russia. And also I’ve seen reports that Ukraine is having to slow progress because of processing surrendering Russian soldiers.
I figure once Russia withdraws troops from Ukraine to reinforce itself, Ukraine will likely pull back and swoop in and take their territory back.
Then we’ll see where this goes, either Putin will withdraw and try to get peace, or he’ll act like a cornered animal, and will get more unpredictable and erratic. There is always the chance that Ukraine will refuse peace talks and just keep marching on Moscow too. Either way, by pushing into Russia they are changing the dynamic of the war drastically and can finally put Russia on the defensive without worrying about losing support from NATO allies.
Interesting strategy, can’t stop them, but their usual tactic of throwing bodies at the problem is kinda working out for them. You can’t move on to Moscow if you’re too busy securing the POWs.
The body mass tactic only works as long as those are able bodies. On defense were the oldest soldiers with lower quality equipment, with less motivation and ability to put up a fight. Hence the mass surrenders. Because all the young and easily compelled to fight were already on Ukraine. Now they will have to shuffle the forces, weakening the entire line and halting the recent offensives. An effective soldier can’t fight in two fronts at once. Even if the progress is slow due to mass surrenders, you’re still better off putting soldiers out of combat without losing territory (actually gainning it), instead of what was happening before.
There are a lot of reasons, but all of the NATO countries that were supplying Ukraine put very tight restrictions on how that equipment could be used. For example, none of the aircraft or artillery were allowed to be fired into Russia for fear of a nuclear escalation.
They’ve been slowly relaxing that restriction and it gave Ukraine more freedom to run the campaign as they see fit
I believe also that the predominating thought in this war among the generals that plan it is that a shake up to the current status quo was needed. Invading Russia gives Ukraine a bit of leverage, plus it draws away RU troops from the front line so that Ukraine may be able to retake a bit of ground.
Grand Poobah Pooty Putin can only say so many times that he’s moving nukes to ready status or whatever until it becomes clear he’s not going to use them. Nuking anybody, especially Ukraine, would be a tacit admission to the world that he’s losing this war. If he did, NATO would likely get involved presumably because they would consider the fallout drifting over Europe to be an act of war, but a casus belli is a casus belli.
So yeah, I can see NATO countries being ok with a strike inside of Russia now. Makes total sense to me. I’m just surprised it took this long to get there.