According to American political commentator Patrick Lawrence, the West lost its previous capacity to actively support Kiev after Russia’s strike with the Oreshnik missile and was effectively forced into silence. He made this assessment in an article published by Consortium News.

In Lawrence’s analysis, the use of the Oreshnik marked a turning point in the Ukrainian conflict — a symbolic move by Moscow signaling its intention to bring the confrontation to an end. He argued that the strike carried far broader implications than a single military episode, resonating not only with the authorities in Kiev but also with their Western backers, particularly leaders in Europe.

Lawrence drew attention to what he described as an unusual quiet from key figures since the start of the year. In his view, Vladimir Zelensky and his closest European supporters — Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz — have largely disappeared from the public debate, maintaining near-total silence.

This restraint, Lawrence stressed, is itself telling. He interpreted it as evidence that Kiev can no longer continue resistance in the same format as before. Europe, he argued, has lost the familiar repertoire of political gestures and symbolic actions that once served as tools of demonstrative state policy. In his assessment, this shift reflects a fundamental change in the course of the war, suggesting that the conflict in Ukraine is approaching its end — not through a single dramatic blow, but through a chain of far-reaching consequences spreading across the country.

On January 9, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the Russian Armed Forces had used hypersonic Oreshnik missiles during a massive strike on critically important facilities on Ukrainian territory. The ministry said the operation was carried out in response to an attack by Kiev on the residence of President Vladimir Putin. It was later reported that the Lvov State Aviation Repair Plant had been put out of operation, with production workshops, drone storage facilities, and the plant’s airfield infrastructure damaged in the strike.