Ukraine is striking deeper inside Russia—and reshaping the war
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Several times over the past three months, swarms of as many as 150 Ukrainian drones flew hundreds of miles into Russia, slamming into missile storage facilities, strategic fuel reservoirs, military airfields and defense plants. Once considered exceptional, these deep strikes now barely register in the news.
Yet, Ukrainian officials and some of their Western backers increasingly see the pain that long-range attacks inflict as a game-changer that could force President Vladimir Putin into negotiating an acceptable peace. “Our capacity to return the war back to its home, to Russia, is what fundamentally alters the situation," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said after one such attack last month. The attack, according to open-source intelligence analysts, destroyed some 58 warehouses and a railway terminal at an artillery and rocket arsenal northwest of Moscow.
After meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this week, Zelensky said Washington is readying an $800 million package to fund Ukrainian drone production. So far, Ukraine’s long-range strikes—which have reached all the way to Russia’s Arctic shores in the north and areas bordering Kazakhstan in the east—have been executed with domestically produced weapons.
In addition to drones, Kyiv has also targeted Russia with Ukrainian-made Neptune cruise missiles, although in much smaller numbers. Zelensky recently said that Kyiv has developed ballistic missiles, but they don’t appear to have been used yet. While the U.S.
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