# OPEN LETTER: To Vladimir Putin, After the Night Kyiv Burned Again > Introduction: a letter written the morning after a night of horror - Author: Maxime Marquette - Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co) - Section: Open letter - Published: 2026-07-03 - Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-lettre-ouverte-a-vladimir-poutine-apres-la-nuit-ou-kyiv-a-de-nouveau-brule ## Introduction: a letter written the morning after a **night of horror** ### What you ordered on the **night** of July 1 to 2 Mr. **Putin**, I write this letter the morning after a night when you chose, once again, **terror** over the negotiating table. On the night of **July 1 to 2, 2026**, your forces launched **570 drones** and **missiles** against **Ukraine**, primarily against **Kyiv**, according to the **Institute for the Study of War** (**ISW**, July 2, 2026). The toll is chilling: at least **27 dead** and **91 wounded** in the **Ukrainian capital** alone. Residential **buildings** hit, an ambulance station struck, a hotel destroyed, a scientific institute damaged. These are not military **targets**, Mr. Putin. These are places where **civilian** life happens. ### Why I am writing to you directly I choose the form of the open letter because polite diplomatic statements no longer suffice to describe what your **decisions** cause every week on Ukrainian soil. I am addressing you directly, as a columnist, to name things without detour. ## The technical detail of a saturation **attack** ### An impressive arsenal deployed against a capital Your forces deployed, that night, **496 attack drones** of the **Shahed**, **Gerbera**, and **Italmas** types, accompanied by **Banderol** loitering munitions and **Parodiya** decoys. Add to that **4 Zirkon anti-ship missiles**, **24 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles**, **34 Kh-101 cruise missiles**, **8 Kalibr** missiles, and **4 Kh-59/69 missiles**. This is a saturation arsenal, Mr. Putin, designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air **defenses** through sheer numbers rather than precision. **Ukraine** says it intercepted **476 drones** and a majority of the missiles, but the sheer number of vectors launched guarantees that some will get through, striking **civilians** indiscriminately. ### Technical innovation in the service of **terror** The **ISW** reports that your forces now use **jet-engine drones**, capable of reaching **500 km/h**, making interception significantly harder for Ukrainian mobile fire groups. You invest in technology, Mr. Putin, but not to spare lives: to take more of them. A new radio frequency, between **3,900 and 4,100 MHz**, was reportedly used for nearly all the **Shahed** drones launched at **Kyiv**, likely to bypass Ukrainian electronic **warfare**. Every technical innovation from your military seems aimed at a single goal: maximizing the reach of **terror** against **civilian** populations. ## The human toll you refuse to see ### Residential **buildings**, not barracks According to Kyiv authorities, at least **20 buildings** were directly hit, and nearly **100 buildings** damaged in total. Additional civilians were likely still trapped under the rubble as I write these lines. An intensive-care **hospital** in Donetsk oblast was damaged. A major humanitarian facility was destroyed, wiping out more than **79 million hryvnias**, roughly **$1.76 million**, in **humanitarian aid** and critical equipment: **generators**, heat pumps, medical supplies, gear for first responders. ### **Victims** beyond the capital Your **strikes** did not spare the regions of **Odesa**, **Zaporizhzhia**, **Dnipropetrovsk**, **Kharkiv**, and **Kirovohrad**. In Odesa alone, at least **2 dead** and **13 additional wounded** must be mourned, with damaged warehouses. President **Volodymyr Zelensky** reported at least **5 additional civilians killed** in Kharkiv oblast. Power outages hit the oblasts of Sumy, Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia, according to grid operator **Ukrenergo**. You are not content with killing, Mr. Putin: you are methodically trying to deprive millions of civilians of electricity, in the middle of summer, just as you did every **winter** since 2022. ## Your own words turned against you ### What **Zelensky** revealed about your intentions President **Zelensky** warned, the day before the attack, that a "massive" **strike** was being prepared, urging citizens to seek **shelter** (CNBC, July 2, 2026). He said he knew you had been preparing this attack for some time. That means, Mr. Putin, that this strike was not an impulsive reaction: it was a calculated, planned, deliberate **choice**. Zelensky stated: "Russia's head is completely refusing to end the war." He added that he had conveyed, through every official and unofficial channel, including people close to you, that the **war** could and should end, and that **Ukraine** was ready for serious **negotiations**. Your answer was 570 vectors of death over Kyiv. ### A 40-day Ukrainian operation that is visibly worrying you Zelensky recently approved a **40-day** operation designed to pressure the **Kremlin** into ending the war, combining long-range drone strikes against your refineries, military facilities, and major cities, including **Moscow** and **St. Petersburg**. This massive strike on Kyiv looks very much like a desperate act of retaliation. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense stated: "as provided for by **Ukraine's** defense strategy, we are depriving the enemy of resources to wage war." You know it, Mr. Putin: this strategy is working, and that is precisely why you are retaliating with such blind brutality against civilians. ## The reaction from European neighbors that you're provoking ### Poland and Finland on alert Your attack forced **Poland** to scramble fighter jets and place its air **defense** and radar reconnaissance systems on alert. **Finland** temporarily imposed a no-fly restriction zone in the eastern part of its gulf before lifting it shortly after. You are triggering, Mr. Putin, a growing defensive mobilization across all of Eastern Europe. Every massive strike against Ukraine strengthens, rather than weakens, the determination of neighboring countries to invest in their own collective security within **NATO**. ### Kyiv's mayor, a direct witness to your choices Kyiv's mayor, **Vitali Klitschko**, stated on Telegram that the city was under attack by ballistic missiles and drones. Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, **Olga Stefanishyna**, reported that residents spent the night in **shelters** while fires ravaged residential buildings in several **neighborhoods**. These are the direct accounts, Mr. Putin, that tell the reality of your orders far better than any statement from your Ministry of Defense invoking supposed military-industrial **targets**. ## The **Kremlin's** narrative versus the facts ### What your Ministry of Defense claims to target Your Ministry of Defense announced it had launched a "massive strike using long-range precision weapons, air, ground, and naval, along with attack drones," allegedly targeting military-industrial facilities, energy complexes, and military airfields in the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy, and Chernihiv regions. But the facts documented by independent sources tell a different **story**: residential buildings, a hotel, an ambulance station, a scientific institute. If these were truly military targets, Mr. Putin, your army urgently needs to review its accuracy, or admit that precision was never the actual objective. ### A communications war you are losing Every strike documented by journalists, NGOs, and institutions like the **ISW** makes it increasingly difficult for your government to maintain the fiction of a targeted, proportionate war. The gap between your official rhetoric and the verifiable reality of civilian damage widens month after month. You are losing this battle for the **truth**, Mr. Putin, precisely because modern technology, satellites, reconnaissance drones, social media, makes it impossible to permanently conceal the real scale of the civilian destruction you order. ## The economic **price** of your stubbornness ### A refining industry under constant pressure While you strike Kyiv, Ukraine keeps targeting your refineries. The recent strike on the **Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez** refinery in Kstovo illustrates this dynamic: you now have to import gasoline from **India** and **Belarus** to make up for your own damaged refining capacity. It is a bitter irony, Mr. Putin: the historic world's second-largest crude oil exporter now finds itself forced to import refined fuel to keep its war economy afloat. This growing dependence structurally weakens your ability to sustain this war over the long term. ### An army struggling to regenerate its manpower According to the ISW, your army is struggling to recruit enough **soldiers** to offset its current losses, which reach considerable levels every month. This demographic and military reality is likely pushing you to favor remote strikes, cheaper in Russian lives, but devastating for Ukrainian civilians. It is a revealing strategic choice: rather than risking more **soldiers** on the ground, you prefer to keep terrorizing civilians from the sky, a choice that will have no effect other than strengthening, day after day, Ukrainian and Western resolve to resist you. ## What the **West** must answer to this letter ### A direct appeal to Western capitals This letter is not addressed only to you, Mr. Putin. It is also addressed, indirectly, to Western leaders still hesitant about the scale of their support for Ukraine. Every massive strike like the one this night must serve as a brutal reminder: **diplomacy** alone has never stopped you, only combined military and economic pressure can hope to shift your strategic calculation. I address European capitals in particular: urgently strengthening the air **defense** systems delivered to Ukraine is not one option among others, it is an absolute necessity to save Ukrainian civilian lives in the weeks ahead. ### The ambiguous but necessary role of the Trump administration The **Donald Trump** administration continues to waver between pressure for rapid **negotiations** and the occasional continuation of certain critical military deliveries. I do not consider Trump an ideal ally for Ukraine, far from it, but I continue to believe that his staying in power remains, in the current polarized American context, a **necessary evil** to preserve a form of Western cohesion against you. Every strike like this night's should reinforce, even within the American administration itself, the conviction that yielding to your demands for negotiation on your terms would be a major strategic mistake for the security of the entire free **world**. ## The broader threat you embody ### A dangerous precedent for China and Iran Every massive strike you order against Ukrainian civilians without decisive consequence sends a dangerous message to other authoritarian regimes: **China**, which is closely watching the Taiwan file, **Iran**, and **North Korea**, which are already actively collaborating with you militarily. Your war is no longer merely a regional conflict, Mr. Putin. It has become a credibility test for the entire rules-based international order, a test the **West** cannot afford to lose without dramatic consequences for future global security. ### An increasingly open authoritarian coalition The use of North Korean soldiers sent as reinforcements to the Kursk region illustrates this growing convergence between authoritarian regimes. You are no longer alone in this war, Mr. Putin, but your diplomatic isolation from Western democracies keeps getting worse. It is this emerging authoritarian coalition, between **Moscow**, Pyongyang, **Tehran**, and, more quietly, Beijing, that the **West** must now confront with renewed collective resolve, without naivety about these regimes' real intentions. ## What I refuse to accept as normal ### The dangerous normalization of nightly **terror** I refuse, Mr. Putin, to let these massive strikes become a media routine treated with indifference by Western public opinion. Every night Kyiv burns under your missiles must keep shocking, mobilizing, and confronting Western consciences worn down by more than four years of war. The media and political fatigue you hope to cultivate in the West is your most insidious weapon, even more than your drones and missiles. I refuse to give in to it, and I call on my readers to also refuse this comfortable indifference. ### A **responsibility** that rests entirely on you I never split the **responsibility** for this war between aggressor and **victim**, Mr. Putin. You chose the invasion in February 2022. You choose, every week, to continue strikes against civilians rather than accept serious negotiation. This moral and political **responsibility** rests entirely on your shoulders. No geopolitical argument, no theory about NATO expansion, no rhetoric about a supposed Western threat can justify the death of civilians in their apartments, in Kyiv, on the night of July 1 to 2, 2026. ## What this letter hopes to provoke ### A call for mobilization, not just indignation This open letter is not meant only to express moral indignation, however legitimate. It is meant to remind my Western readers, and perhaps even some of your own advisors, Mr. Putin, that this war continues to claim civilian victims every week, and that collective **silence** in the face of this reality is, in itself, a form of complicity. I hope this text contributes, in its modest way, to maintaining the media and political pressure necessary to ensure Western support for Ukraine never weakens, precisely at the moment your own war effort shows tangible signs of structural exhaustion. ### A direct invitation to end this war I close this section with a direct invitation, Mr. Putin: finally accept the serious negotiations Zelensky says he has offered you repeatedly, through every available channel. Every additional day of war adds deaths on both sides of the front, Russian and Ukrainian, for an increasingly marginal territorial gain. History will judge you not on your ability to prolong this war, but on your ability, or inability, to end it justly and durably, while respecting the Ukrainian sovereignty you violated in 2022. ## The role of independent media against your **propaganda** ### Documenting so it is never forgotten Organizations like the **Kyiv Independent**, **Militarnyi**, and the **ISW** continue to methodically document every strike, every victim, every piece of material damage caused by your orders. This meticulous documentation work constitutes, over time, one of the most powerful weapons against your propaganda apparatus. Every report published, every satellite photo analyzed, every testimony gathered by independent journalists adds to a file that could one day serve as the basis for an international reckoning over the crimes committed during this war. ### A **responsibility** I modestly share As a columnist, I consider my modest contribution to this documentation and analysis effort part of this necessary collective **memory**, at my own scale. I do not claim to change the course of the war, Mr. Putin, but I refuse to let your actions pass in silence within the Western media space. This conviction guides every line of this letter, and will continue to guide my work as long as this unjust war continues on Ukrainian soil. ## What history will remember of your military choices ### A legacy built on destruction Mr. Putin, every massive strike like that of **July 2, 2026** adds to a historical record that will define your political legacy long after your own tenure. History books will not remember your Ministry of Defense's justifications about supposed military-industrial targets: they will remember the destroyed residential buildings and the names of civilian victims. You chose, starting in **February 2022**, to build your legacy on the invasion of a sovereign country rather than on building a stable regional partnership. This choice will continue to haunt you, including before potential international courts, long after this conflict ends. ### Ukrainian **memory** will not fade The Ukrainian people, Mr. Putin, will remember every night of terror, every destroyed building, every **child** left without electricity in the middle of summer. This collective memory, documented by independent institutions, will stand as a lasting testimony to the real nature of your war, far beyond the official propaganda broadcast from **Moscow**. No temporary military victory, no marginal territorial advance will be able to erase this collective memory of a nation that chose to resist rather than submit to your aggression. ## One last number that sums it all up ### Four years of war, a toll that grows heavier every week Mr. Putin, your war is now entering its **fourth complete year**. Every additional week of conflict adds deaths, wounded, destroyed buildings, shattered lives on both sides of the front. The cumulative toll of this war, documented by multiple independent studies, now exceeds comprehension for a twenty-first-century European conflict. This cumulative figure, however terrible, must remain present in the mind of every Western leader considering, even temporarily, reducing support for Ukraine out of budgetary or political fatigue. ### One final question, asked directly I close this section with a simple question, Mr. Putin: how many more nights like that of **July 1 to 2** will it take before you accept that no lasting military victory can be built on terror inflicted on civilian populations? This question will go unanswered by you, I know. But it deserves to be asked publicly, again and again, until an answer different from missiles eventually emerges from **Moscow**. ## Conclusion: this letter will remain, your justifications will fade ### One last word before closing this letter Mr. Putin, I close this letter with the conviction that your military justifications for the strike on Kyiv will not survive scrutiny of the facts documented by independent sources. The residential buildings, the hospitals, the ambulance stations hit tell a truth your official statement cannot erase. This letter, like hundreds of other texts published across the Western **world** this week, will stand as one more testimony to the reality of this war, at a time when you perhaps hope international fatigue will eventually grant you what your weapons have failed to achieve on the ground. ### A hope, despite everything, for Ukraine I conclude with hope, despite the darkness of this night of July 1 to 2: hope for a Ukraine that keeps resisting, documenting, defending itself, with the unwavering support of a West that, I sincerely hope, will never give in to fatigue in the face of your destructive stubbornness. This letter may change nothing in your immediate strategic calculation, Mr. Putin, but it adds to a collective record that, one day, may well weigh more heavily than you imagine today on the scales of history. **By Maxime Marquette, columnist** ## Columnist's transparency note ### Editorial stance I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies. I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events. ### Method and sources This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here. **Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies. **Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations. When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**. ### Nature of the analysis The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted. My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors. This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text. ## Sources ### Primary sources - [Institute for the Study of War — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 2, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-2-2026/) - [CNBC — Russia launches massive strike on Ukraine as Poland scrambles jets, July 2, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/russia-launches-missile-drone-strikes-ukraine-kyiv.html) - [Kyiv Independent — ongoing coverage of the strike on Kyiv, July 2026](https://www.kyivindependent.com/) ### Secondary sources - [Ukrainska Pravda — coverage of the Russian attack, July 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/) - [The Guardian — Ukraine live coverage, July 2026](https://www.theguardian.com/world/ukraine) - Militarnyi — military analysis of the July 2 strike, July 2026 --- Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-lettre-ouverte-a-vladimir-poutine-apres-la-nuit-ou-kyiv-a-de-nouveau-brule