Perhaps in response to this surge in U.S. and NATO assistance, though also no doubt to step up his own army’s dreadful performance, Putin is moving closer to viewing the conflict not merely a “special military operation” against Ukraine, which he has dismissed as a mythical country, but a full-fledged war against a global superpower. On Wednesday, he appointed Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of the General Staff, to take command of the offensive in eastern Ukraine.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the Russian army will suddenly snap to—chiefs of staff, even one as celebrated as Gerasimov, don’t necessarily have operational expertise—but it does signify that Putin has reassessed the nature of the war and elevated its stakes.

Nor is Putin conceding any ground to Ukraine, despite the recent retreat of Russian troops from the area around Kyiv. Though the fighting is now focused in the country’s eastern region of Donbas, where both sides are exchanging fierce artillery fire, Russia fired two cruise missilesy at Kyiv just hours after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited the capital and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.