FIRST Ukraine assembled an arsenal of millions of drones that, along with Russia’s own build-up, turned a 40km-wide strip along the front line into a killing ground.
Then it 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 160km from the front, that feed Russian troops and materiel into battle.
Ukraine 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 unarmoured 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 Ukrainian research group DeepState.
Gen Oleksandr Syrsky, the top Ukrainian military commander, said Ukraine had reclaimed more than 100 sq km more than it lost.
The attacks on Russian logistics are part of a synchronised, multi-layered campaign that covers the close-in “kill zone”, the mid-range resupply zone in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and the territory far inside Russia where Ukraine has hit sites producing crucial weapons 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.
Ukraine defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in June that Ukrainian forces carried out twice as many strikes at least 50km from the front line in May as they did the previous month.
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 mechanised 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 towards a ceasefire.
The commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Centre said it is 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-defence systems in Russia and 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 defence of the Donbas, the region most coveted by the Kremlin.
After an intense campaign of strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the winter, Kyiv is concerned about a humanitarian catastrophe if the war drags into another brutal winter.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned recently that Ukraine’s dwindling supply of Patriot air-defence 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 weapons production.
Fedorov announced plans in May to spend more than US$113mil to develop weapons for the “logistics lockdown” campaign.
More broadly, European nations have allocated US$1.63bil to Ukrainian drone production this year, outstripping the financing for all of 2025, according to the Kiel Institute, a German think tank.
The campaign aimed at Russian logistics is having its most visible results along the southern front, where geography favours the Ukrainians.
The area includes Russia’s so-called land bridge to occupied Crimea, and Moscow relies on a roughly 300km stretch of exposed highways to supply its forces.
The Ukrainian military said recently 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 1st Azov Army Corps said in a statement.
By spring, he said, he could see the captured city of Mariupol – nearly 100km from the front – through the lens of a piloted drone.
The Ukrainians modified a drone known as the Hornet to target Russian logistics. Because they 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 unarmoured transport trucks and trains. — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
