A Twist in Ukraine’s Drone Campaign Is ‘Really Hurting the Russians’
Midrange attacks, using upgraded drones that Ukraine produces in huge numbers, are causing fuel shortages and complicating troop rotations
Reporting from Dnipro, Kyiv and eastern Ukraine
First Ukraine assembled an arsenal of millions of drones that, along with Russia’s own buildup, turned a 25-mile-wide strip along the front line into a killing ground. Then Kyiv expanded its reach deep into the Russian heartland as it targeted oil infrastructure and military factories, making long-range violence in the war a two-way street.
Now, Ukraine is focusing on the middle ground — the critical roads and railways, in some cases more than 100 miles from the front, that feed Russian troops and matériel into battle. Kyiv is calling the effort a “logistics lockdown,” and it is systematically reshaping the battlefield, at least until Russian forces find a way to adapt.
Ukraine is wreaking havoc on unarmored trucks and trains in the battlefield’s rear, using drones with upgraded engines and batteries, integrated Starlink communication systems and new artificial-intelligence capabilities. The ramped-up attacks are causing fuel shortages, complicating troop rotations and reducing Russian military activity on the front.
May was the first month since 2023 in which Russia suffered a net loss of territory, according to the Ukrainian research group DeepState. On Monday, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the top Ukrainian military commander, said Ukraine had reclaimed in May nearly 40 square miles more than it lost.
The attacks on Russian logistics are part of a synchronized, multilayered campaign that covers the close-in “kill zone,” the midrange resupply zone in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and the territory far inside Russia where Ukraine has hit sites producing crucial weapon technology.
“That’s what’s new, and that’s what is really hurting the Russians,” said Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general who is a fellow at the Lowy Institute, a research group in Sydney.
The coordinated campaign has made it hard for Moscow to generate momentum, with its spring and summer offensives so far failing to achieve notable results.
Ukraine produces so many drones from its own factories that it can now launch more than 5,000 mid- and deep-range strikes every month, according to Ukrainian officials. Late last week, Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said that Ukrainian forces last month carried out twice as many strikes at least 30 miles from the front line as they did in April.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, found in a recent assessment that such strikes were helping to push the conflict into a new phase.
As the forces operate systems “capable of disrupting Russian forces throughout their operational depth,” according to researchers at the think tank, Ukraine has a “unique and time-constrained opportunity” to mount the sort of mechanized offensives that have become very difficult because of the threat of drones.
Jack Watling, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a research group in London, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the war had reached a turning point, arguing that as Russia’s battlefield performance worsened, Ukraine had a chance to push Moscow toward a cease-fire.
In a field in Ukraine late last month, the commander of the Second Battalion of the First Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Center said it was critical to seize the moment because the Ukrainian military’s advantage might not last.
As long as it does, “the main idea is for Russia to truly feel war, to know that distance does not provide safety,” said the commander, who under Ukrainian military protocol gave only his call sign, Whale.
As he spoke, soldiers scrawled messages of retribution on the wings of a dozen drones, each packed with thermobaric explosives.
The next day, Ukraine’s General Staff announced successful strikes on Russian oil refineries, warehouses and air-defense systems in Russia and in occupied Ukraine.
Even as Ukraine finds itself in a hopeful moment, steep challenges remain.
Russia continues to ravage the cities in eastern Ukraine that make up the spine of its defense of the Donbas, the region most coveted by the Kremlin. After an intense campaign of strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last winter, Ukraine is concerned about a humanitarian catastrophe if the war drags into another brutal winter.
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned recently that Ukraine’s dwindling supply of Patriot air-defense interceptors had reached critical levels and that Moscow was taking advantage of that vulnerability to pummel Kyiv and other cities.
Ukraine’s ability to maintain its momentum, soldiers said, depends on continuing to scale up weapon production.
The defense minister, Mr. Fedorov, announced plans in May to spend more than $113 million to develop weapons for the “logistics lockdown” campaign.
More broadly, European nations have allocated $1.63 billion to Ukrainian drone production this year, outstripping the financing for all of 2025, according to the Kiel Institute, a German think tank.
For years, Ukraine begged its allies for weapons that could strike from a distance. But the Western platforms it received were limited by scarce ammunition, geographic restrictions intended to avoid escalation, and a technical inability to track and strike moving targets.
So Ukraine focused its energies on developing a homegrown defense industry.
An executive from the Ukrainian company that makes the Bars jet-powered drone said that in 2024, the company received a contract to produce 112 long-range strike drones that year. Its most recent contract, he said, is for 25,000 drones capable of long- and midrange strikes.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for his safety, said that, critically, Ukrainian companies had all agreed to share technological and tactical advances through a mechanism set up by the Ministry of Defense.
The campaign aimed at Russian logistics is having its most visible results along the southern front, where geography favors the Ukrainians.
The area includes Russia’s so-called land bridge to occupied Crimea, and Moscow relies on a roughly 185-mile stretch of exposed highways to supply its forces. On Monday, the Ukrainian military said its drone operators had established aerial control over a section of the land route used by Russian forces, significantly complicating “logistics related to supplying the Russian Army and fuel deliveries” to Crimea.
The only other connection between Russia and Crimea is the Kerch Bridge, which has come under repeated Ukrainian attack.
At the start of this year, Ukraine formulated a plan to isolate Russian forces, the commander of unmanned-systems forces in the First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine said in a statement.
By spring, he said, he was able to see the captured city of Mariupol — more than 60 miles from the front — through the lens of a piloted drone.
The Ukrainians modified a drone known as the Hornet to target Russian logistics. Because Hornets carry relatively small explosive payloads, they cannot penetrate heavily fortified or underground Russian ammunition warehouses. But, unlike missiles and bombs, the drones are controlled by a pilot, allowing Azov operators to target unarmored transport trucks and trains.
Fortified sites are attacked by other weapons, like powerful glide bombs. Ukraine recently announced the first successful test of a domestically produced glide bomb, which it said was capable of hitting targets, including fortified ones, “dozens of kilometers” away. Russia has used such bombs to devastating effect as it has razed Ukrainian cities.
The Ukrainian military claims to have struck hundreds of midrange targets over the past month. An independent Ukrainian open-source investigative project, Tochnyi, geolocated 130 strikes in May on military vehicles and supply-chain structures about 20 to 100 miles from the front.
The Azov commander said it was impossible for Russia to stretch out its air defenses and soldiers over the ever-growing distances that Ukrainian piloted drones could travel.
Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting
Corrected on
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a military unit. It is the First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine, not the First Azov Army Corps.
Ukraine Bombards Moscow With One of the Biggest Drone Attacks of the War
Black smoke from a burning oil refinery filled the Moscow sky. The city’s four airports were urgently closed. And part of the busy highway that rings the Russian capital, a metropolis of 13 million people, was shut down.
As Ukraine escalated its effort to bring the war home for Russians, the strikes on Thursday appeared to be the largest drone attack on the Russian capital since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the war more than four years ago.
No deaths were immediately reported. But the large-scale assault seemed likely to feed fears among Russians that the Kremlin’s ability to isolate society from the impacts of the war was sharply eroding. That would usher in a new stage for a conflict that has now run longer than World War I.
For days, lines have formed and rationing has been implemented at gas stations in dozens of Russian regions, as persistent Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries and processing facilities have threatened a fuel shortage.
Ukraine has taken particular aim at Crimea, the peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014, with a range of strikes aimed at cutting off the region’s supply lines. The Russian economy has also begun suffering from the costs of the war in a way that the Kremlin had managed to avoid for years.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in a voice memo shared with journalists on Thursday, warned, “If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well.”
Mr. Zelensky cast the drone onslaught as a response to an attack this week on the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex in Kyiv, one of the holiest sites in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Russia claimed that the complex had been hit by an errant Ukrainian interceptor missile.
Mr. Zelensky has been emboldened by technological and production advances in Ukrainian drone warfare that have enabled his government to send larger swarms of drones into Russian airspace and overwhelm defenses.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that during the attack on Thursday, it downed 992 drones countrywide, the largest number in a single attack in the war and a significant increase in scale from prior Ukrainian onslaughts. It also said it downed four long-range cruise missiles that were part of the assault.
Hard-liners in Russia responded to the assault by urging the Kremlin to unleash the country’s full military capabilities to prevent Ukraine from escalating attacks within Russia’s borders.
How much further Russia, which has the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, can go with its conventional arsenal is unclear. But the calls from the hard-liners raised the prospect of a new cycle of escalation, with the virtual stalemate along the front line giving way to competing airborne bombardments far from the battlefield.
“We must strike the enemy mercilessly, without hesitation,” Andrei Gurulyov, a former general and a lawmaker in Russia’s governing party, told the Russian news outlet RTVI. He called on Moscow to “eliminate the entire leadership, destroy all command centers, bring the entire industrial sector to its knees” and “achieve success at the front.”
It is far from clear whether the increased pressure at home will push Mr. Putin to end the war. Moscow has stated that it will not stop fighting until its forces take the rest of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine or the land is handed over in a peace deal, as Washington proposed last year. Kyiv still holds a swath of territory about twice the size of Rhode Island in the region, which includes cities that have been heavily fortified since 2014.
Mr. Putin did not address the Ukrainian attack during comments on Thursday afternoon at a summit of Southeast Asian leaders in the Russian city of Kazan, and Russian state news broadcasts minimized the attack.
Russian missile defenses shot down at least 194 drones that were flying toward Moscow in several waves on Thursday morning, Sergei S. Sobyanin, the city’s mayor, said in a statement.
The drone strikes injured at least 17 people in the Moscow region, according to Andrei Y. Vorobyev, the area’s governor. All of Moscow’s airports shut down for most of the morning before gradually reopening early Thursday.
Mr. Sobyanin said that some of the Ukrainian drones had struck a sprawling oil refinery that towers over the city to the southeast and that had been targeted in a smaller attack on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry published dramatic footage of a roof at the fuel facility flying into the air as the installation was engulfed in flames.
Residents of Moscow’s southeastern areas woke up on Thursday to the thuds of Ukrainian drones crashing into the refinery. Soon, plumes of toxic smoke hung over several neighborhoods, with images online showing the aftermath of rain that seemed slicked with oil falling from the sky.
The Moscow region’s environment ministry advised residents to “limit their presence outdoors,” while denying reports of an oil-laden rain, describing it as rainfall infused with soot.
There were no sirens or notifications from the emergency services, Nikolai, 44, who lives in a neighborhood northeast of the refinery, said by phone from Moscow. Photographs taken from his house showed billowing smoke, although the refinery is four miles away.
“It was clear from the start that this one was way more serious. Since early morning, we’ve been able to see at least two sources of fire there,” he said, comparing Thursday’s attack to the strike on the refinery on Tuesday. He asked that his last name be withheld because of possible repercussions from the authorities for discussing the strikes.
Nikolai, who called himself a staunch opponent of Mr. Putin and the war, said he had always thought that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine would eventually come back to haunt the country.
He said that neighbors in his mostly working-class area appeared to be spooked. But many are still unable to make a mental link between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the attacks at home, he said.
“People in the yard outside this morning go around asking something like, ‘How is that possible?’” he said. “I see anger and confusion, but I don’t think people can still put two and two together.”
“It’s like they were told for a long time not to look up,” he added, “and now it’s as if they have lifted their heads for the first time, and it’s impossible not to look up.”
A 20-year-old employee at a Moscow school described feeling genuinely frightened, like many in the city, but noted that others were trying not to think about it and were pretending that everything was normal.
The employee, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said that more assaults on the capital were likely, and that the school was preparing a shelter, which suggested that its administrators expected things to get worse.
The refinery that was attacked on Thursday covers some 40 percent of Moscow’s needs for gasoline, and the strikes were likely to further strain supplies across the country. The Moscow authorities said that gas stations across the city were working as usual.
Ukrainian drones also damaged Moscow’s largest open-air market on Thursday, according to Mr. Sobyanin, the mayor. One of the city’s largest shopping malls had to shut down after a drone attack, Mr. Vorobyev, the regional governor, said in a statement. Another drone rammed into a high-rise residential building in the suburb of Zhukovsky, according to the local mayor there.
Russia has pummeled Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones in recent days, damaging the monastery complex and other sites. No casualties were immediately reported in strikes against Kyiv early Thursday.
Many Russians have become nervous about sharing imagery and video online of the increasing Ukrainian attacks. The Moscow antiterrorism task force last month issued an order restricting the publication of photos and videos showing the aftermath of Ukrainian attacks.
A pro-war Russian blogger told the online outlet SOTA that he had been summoned by the police after sharing a video of the attack on the oil refinery earlier this week.
Vladimir Solovyov, a hard-line state news commentator, said, “Everyone who sends such material needs to be jailed, and publicly at that.”
He urged Russians not to panic and to draw strength from family stories, a reference to previous times in Russian history that were worse.
“If you
feel you can’t go on, if you’re wringing your hands in despair, well, just make up your mind. Leave. If you are weak. If there is nothing Russian in you. Follow the path of traitors,” Mr. Solovyov said in a clip that circulated widely online.
Valerie Hopkins, Alina Lobzina, Oleg Matsnev and Siobhán O’Grady contributed reporting.
Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.
A version of this article appears in print on June 19, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ukraine Hits Moscow With One of Biggest Drone Attacks of War.
Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine
Moscow Refinery: The dramatic explosion of a fuel storage facility in Moscow may have been caused not by a Ukrainian drone but instead by a Russian air defense missile, an analysis of social media videos verified by The New York Times indicates.
Ukraine’s Push for Ballistic Missiles: Ukrainian officials have said in recent weeks that the country is pushing hard to develop ballistic missiles domestically. Kyiv views them as essential to increase pressure on Moscow and, perhaps, to force it toward negotiations.
Trump at G7 Summit: President Trump made it clear at the summit that the Ukraine conflict, which he once said he could end in 24 hours, was no longer high on his priority list. “Look, we have nothing to do with it,” Trump said of the war.
Cultural Symbol Burned: The latest casualty in the war is a centuries-old cathedral in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “one of the largest Russian crimes against Christian culture.”
Ukraine Taking Step to Join European Union: Even though negotiations will begin for Ukraine to join the bloc, the path ahead is a long one.
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