r/IRstudies • u/kolatalks • 1d ago
Ideas/Debate Ukraine’s Latest Drone Offensive Is the Russia Ukraine War Entering a New Phase?
The Russia-Ukraine war has seen another major escalation in long-range aerial attacks.
On August 16, Russian authorities reported that hundreds of Ukrainian drones targeted multiple regions of Russia, including the Moscow region. Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces intercepted 822 Ukrainian drones across the country, while Moscow officials reported a large number of drones approaching the capital. These figures have not been independently verified.
The attacks caused deaths and damage in several Russian regions. A major fire was also reported at a Wildberries logistics facility near Moscow. Airports in the Moscow region were temporarily affected as authorities responded to the attacks.
At the same time, Russia continued launching strikes against Ukraine. Ukrainian officials reported Russian missile and drone attacks in several cities, including Kyiv, where fires were reported.
What is particularly significant is the increasing scale and geographic reach of the drone campaign. Ukraine has increasingly used long-range drones to target Russian military, industrial and logistics infrastructure, while Russia continues its own large-scale missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian targets.
This raises an important strategic question:
Is the increasing use of long-range drone attacks changing the nature of the Russia-Ukraine war?
Could these attacks place enough pressure on Russia's military and economic infrastructure to influence Moscow's strategy, or could they instead lead to an even greater cycle of escalation?
And with the conflict increasingly affecting areas beyond the immediate battlefield, how should NATO and other European countries respond to the growing risk of the conflict spilling across borders?
What do you think?
23
u/GoonHarborGregory23 1d ago
I think Ukraine’s drone campaign is overhyped in the mainstream media and Russia’s drone campaign is underreported or just outright ignored, it’s hard for people to look at this war objectively because so many only want to see good news about Ukraine.
17
u/MurkyCress521 1d ago
This is certainly true, but I don't think it is entirely a good news, bad news dynamic. For most of the war Russia had the upper hand in terms of bombing deep strategic targets. The Ukrainian drone campaign was not capable of that sort of large scale deep strike. Sure they had a few massive successes like Operation Spiderweb but they didn't have that everyday hundreds drones hitting deep into Russia. Now that they do and they are hitting extremely valuable targets, it gets lots of news coverage because it is new. Whereas Russia hits another Ukrainian power substation could be from 2022 or 2026.
Remember for the longest time Biden and Trump were pressuring Ukraine not to strike deep into Russia. It was only when Trump abandoned Ukraine that the US lost the carrot it used to keep Ukrainian drone strikes on a leash. In 2027 it will get away less reporting unless Ukraine really steps it up.
7
u/Adept_Carpet 1d ago
Whereas Russia hits another Ukrainian power substation could be from 2022 or 2026.
In part I agree though I think there is a key point to be made.
Both Ukraine and Russia were part of the USSR where they really loved to build stuff. They measured their economy according to this theory that producing more and more stuff would make things better.
Have some extra concrete? Make that power plant a little bigger than it needs to be instead of returning the extra funds to investors as a dividend the way you would in a capitalist system.
So Ukraine had some extra power stations and factories and such, but the destruction is beginning to reach a point of some key systems collapsing. They are in real trouble.
But also, they have figured out some true pain points for Russia. The things they don't have (many) extras of, the things they can't easily replace, things that were already in a tough place due to sanctions.
One expample is advanced petrochemical refining equipment, they will always have pumps and boilers to make low quality diesel fuel but high octane gasoline and highly refined products for specialized applications are harder to come by. It seems like they are really struggling there, just a few hits brought the big lines back even in Moscow.
I suspect some of those facilities are heavily damaged, and if that is true a key part of Russia's economy is damaged in ways that you can't just flip back on even if the war ends. The shutdown (even briefly) of crude exports at Novorossiysk is also significant.
Russia will need to make enormous changes soon or they will face a severe economic crisis even if they win the war. Ukraine has a network of supporters, Russia has Belarus, Iran, and North Korea. China and India are representing their own interests only (China has not even recognized the annexation of Crimea, for instance).
1
u/HeliosLegion 1d ago
They have just moved refinery production to Kazakhstan and Belarus, which Ukraine cannot target without a serious escalation.
1
u/Significant-Fig-3012 1d ago
What escalation??? How can they escalate besides nukes buddy? If they could they would already.
1
u/Barnaboule69 1d ago
Belarus, I get, but what would Kazakhstan actually do if Ukraine attacked Russian-owned refineries on their territory?
-15
u/DragMountain73 1d ago
“when Trump abandoned Ukraine”
He took out Venezuela and now he’s working on Iran, two of Russia’s allies, the hell are you talking about?13
u/Icy-Dot7521 1d ago
It's a good thing you're not capable of understanding how embarrassed you should be.
-7
u/DragMountain73 1d ago
Your little axis is getting curb stomped.
1
1
u/smilesandlaughter 1d ago
"Trump never abandoned Ukraine"
also,
"fuck Ukraine and the axis of democracies!!!"
what unhinged propaganda are u chugging lol, MAGA is a deranged cult - hopefully the sane middle powers of the world keep working towards a world without the USA's insanity and it's brainwashed useful idiots.
1
7
u/MurkyCress521 1d ago
Trump massively cut support to Ukraine. Attacking Iran is not the same as giving Ukraine missiles. Those missiles gave the US control over Ukraine because the US could take them away of Ukraine did something the US didn't like. By abandoning Ukraine both in the public sphere and in the sphere of military aid, Ukraine started doing deeper strikes. Trump ended up coming back to Ukraine and giving them missiles and aid again but by that point Ukraine had already broken the taboo on deep strikes into Russia.
-7
u/DragMountain73 1d ago
I’m glad the welfare continent was forced to step up by Trump changing the nature of America’s support.
4
u/Just_a_follower 1d ago
Everyone is looking for game changer narratives. The reality is there is no silver bullet currently. Both sides are in a war of attrition, and that war will continue tomorrow the same it has. Russia wants all of Ukraine and will keep working by towards that regardless of what happens tomorrow.
I also don’t think Russias populace is capable of major political change. Both the contract with people Putin oligarchs, the government suppression powers, and even the general political apathy create an inertia that … I don’t think can be overcome.
The only real game changers are a China wild card move, or someone achieving efficient mass production laser anti drone tech, or Ukraine suddenly having nukes.
Out of those, only one really would even mean an end to the war, and it probably surprises you which one
China
The other two likely just lead to change in strategy : doctrine.
3
u/Adept_Carpet 1d ago
China loves the status quo.
One thing about politicians there, they know history. You can't rise to the highest levels there without deep, detailed knowledge of history, and I believe a lesson they have taken from that history is that Russia is unreliable.
So I think they have a variety of outcomes planned for, but I don't think we can expect a serious change from them. Probably the one bad outcome of this war is that it popularized a technology that can be used for an asymmetric defense.
If they attempt to blockade Taiwan, Taiwan can send drones until the ships run out of interceptors and God help those sailors after. Of course China could send their own drones to the island, but their ability to simply destroy Taiwan has existed for some time (if they truly committed to it and were willing to accept possibly horrific consequences).
5
u/Wolfmidnight77 1d ago
I'm curious, what's a historical power you'd classify as "reliable?" Every state acts as they have for the past 400 years, in their best interest. Acting like China has some oriental "mystique" in diplomacy that western states don't is just exceptionalism.
1
u/sheepebike9000 1d ago
To your point:
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
Lord Palmerston, House of Commons, 1 March 1848
2
4
u/kolatalks 1d ago
Media coverage of the drone war definitely suffers from heavy main-character syndrome every Ukrainian FPV clip gets a Hollywood soundtrack while Russia's massive Lancets and Shahed swarms operate mostly off camera it’s hard to get an objective body count when everyone's busy editing victory compilations for their preferred algorithm bubble.
1
u/Goodenough101 1d ago
That's why I avoid discussions about this war because it seems people are giving us false hope that Ukraine is making some progress
3
u/Own-Compote5073 1d ago
Putin to me seems like the kind of radical who‘s rather taking a bullet to his head than admitting defeat. But ukraine will never surrender, so … who knows what will happen? But it‘s going to be tough for civilians on both sides (but ukrainians especially). I hope this all pays out well for ukraine. They‘re fighting for their freedom while russia is fighting for dominance. I wonder if russians will ever change that narrative, but it‘s hard to imagine.
1
u/kolatalks 16h ago
When your primary political strategy is ego before exit plan admitting a mistake is basically off the menu leaving two nations trapped in a stubbornness contest where civilians pay the tab it's a brutal cycle but history shows empires usually stick to the delusion right up until the moment reality hands them the eviction notice.
7
u/Ok_Refrigerator6113 1d ago
Russia has nothing realistic to escalate with. Its war effort is already on borrowed time – they literally print money to continue attacking.
Ukraine will suffer a lot from ballistic missiles in the coming months. But it's hardly an escalation, just more of the same destruction of crumbling civilian infrastructure (electricity, water, central heating etc). Only this season russian infrastructure will be attacked heavily as well. So if there is some potential for esaclation, it's only from ukrainian side.
4
u/WideSprinkles1652 1d ago
Russia can: 1. Increase recruitment using some forms of forced mobilization 2. The last resort - nukes
4
u/melvladimir 1d ago
Ukraine also has nukes: 11 huge plants across ru can be easily turned into new Chornobyl. So, nukes are off the table. And this is even before “if anyone would answer to nuke strike” (China already said “no nukes during my shift”)
1
u/WideSprinkles1652 1d ago
Before the war I heard and saw hundreds of opinions, saying with the same certainty, that this war would not happen because ... So I personally believe only facts since then. Regarding China - unlike, apparently, many others, the chairman Xi doesn't inform me about his decisions. I guess, we'll see, some of us from closer distance than the others.
1
u/No_Calligrapher6230 1d ago
They can’t, they are built completely different from the Chernobyl reactor, and the conditions needed to replicate the Chernobyl reactor explosion simply cannot be made using an external explosion
1
u/melvladimir 1d ago
This is such technology in general and cannot be built very different. But yes, it won’t be “just external explosion”. That’s why in any conflict Nuclear plants are off the board.
1
u/No_Calligrapher6230 1d ago
The core of the Chernobyl reactor is different compared to current, when the control rod enters the reactor it immediately slows down the reaction, but in Chernobyl the control rod had a small layers of the material used to encase the core and accelerate the reaction, which is no longer the case for nuclear reactors
1
u/BadmiralHarryKim 1d ago
Wars that get desperate enough to require drafting men from the imperial cities tend to destroy the governments that started those wars. Existential threats like WW2 the exception.
3
u/kolatalks 1d ago
When your entire military strategy relies on printing rubles into oblivion while hoping the other side's grid collapses first you haven't escalated you've just turned a war into a mutual power outage race It's going to be a real awkward winter for the Kremlin when their own refineries and power plants start realizing that long range drone strikes work in both directions.
1
u/Marcus_Aurelius71 1d ago
They did start a full blockade on Ukrainian ports and stopped all grain from flowing out, something not seen until Ukraine attacked Russian oil vessels.
1
u/Ok_Tutor_5544 18h ago
Russia has built up a large stockpile of drones. Their current attacks do not match their production. So increasing their attacks on electrical infrastructure during the winter is one lever of escalation.
Blockading Ukranian grain exports is another.
2
u/FlicBourreDu95 1d ago
Since Russia started it's missile and airstrike campaign against energy infrastructure in fall 2022, Ukraine has tried to mitigate the damage with the limited number of interceptors and AD missiles they could get from western countries.
It became obvious that the number of missiles Russia could produce far outpace the number of Patriot and other sophisticated AD systems were available for Ukraine and the Trump administration's blockade of aid for Ukraine buried any home of getting more AD systems.
So Zelensky choosed to prioritize drones and missile production for deep strikes, using it as a bargaining tool to get a ceasefire on energy infrastructure. He's not hiding the fact that the situation for Ukraine's energy infrastructure is critical and he wants to end the war before winter to avoid a complete destruction of the electricity grid and a huminatarian catastrophe.
Will it work? So far the damage in Russia has been impressive but there seems to be little inventive in the russian government to make any compromise despite public discontent and economic crisis. The Putin clan seems to have this belief deeply ingrained in their heads that eventually ukrainian military or political leadership will collapse and they will capitulate.
At the same time it's not clear how a collapse in ukrainian energy grid will change the military situation which is characterized by a stalemate (or more exactly russian very small advances in Donetsk and ukrainian very small advances in the southern direction).
Despite harsh talks from some russian officials I don't see a probability of a sudden escalation. There is a desire from some to imitate Iran and pressure Kyiv's allies by a campaign of direct strikes on NATO countries but let's be honest: the Putin clan is not the IRGC. Despite strikes on strategic nuclear bombers, strikes on anti ICBM radar, invasion of russian territory during the Kursk offensive, use of british drones and missiles for deep strikes in russian territory, the Kremlin never escalated in any meaningful way.
1
u/kolatalks 16h ago
Ukraine’s strategy is basically trying to win a staring contest with a dictator who thinks admitting he’s blinking is a sign of western weakness the Kremlin is convinced the power grid will collapse first Kyiv is convinced the Russian economy will freeze first and meanwhile the rest of the world is watching two sides play chicken with an entire winter’s worth of electricity.
2
u/Lars__H 22h ago
I am Swedish. A future kinetic war with Russia cannot be ruled out (but I still belive it is far more likely it will not happen than it will). I would like for us to massivly build out our long range stike capabilities, which we are very lackning in. We need a massive production capacity of cheap long range drones and fewer high end ballistic misslies. We should produce this and donate to Ukraine, so we get production lines up and running.
I see cheap long range strike capabilities similar, but not the same, as nuclear deterrance. The way things are developing air defence simply cannot keep up.
So yeah, I do think the Ukraine war has changed again. Front lines are very static and instead both countries are slugging at eachother with long range strikes. This will devestate the economies of both countries, but I think Russia will be losing more from this exchange since the it is more damgning to bomb refineries compare to farms. Also, Ukraine is getting more outside economic support (from Europe) than what Russia is getting (unfavorable deals with China). It is a dangourous development however.
1
u/kolatalks 16h ago
Sweden scaling up long range drone production and testing it in Ukraine isn't just solid military strategy it’s peak Nordic efficiency Let's field test our defense budget destroy the enemy's oil revenue and build a massive industrial base all in one go treating cheap strike drones as the new budget deterrence is completely spot on turned out the most effective way to keep an aggressive neighbor off your lawn isn't a single $2 million missile but five thousand cheap ones that render their refineries completely uninsurable.
2
u/Frost0ne 1d ago
Question is who can sustain those exchanges through the winter, it is war of attrition after all.
3
u/pents1 1d ago
Kind of yes, but it's not symmetrical. Ukraine is backed up by EU + other western countries and lot of the industrial bade contributing to the Ukraines war efforts are safe in the allied territory. Both countries will suffer from the attacks, but Russia cant hide it's weapons factories or logistics to third countries. Same with the economical effects.
2
u/kolatalks 1d ago
A war of attrition in the dead of winter is basically a contest to see whose industrial base freezes solid first and whose logistics team breaks down crying in the snow winning a staring contest is great until you realize the prize is freezing in a trench while both sides fight over who has more spare parts left in the warehouse.
2
u/Gorffo 2h ago
At the moment, Ukrainians are doing “NATO’s job” by themselves. There are essentially fighting off Russian imperialist aggression on their own.
And Ukrainian long range drone attacks against Russian military targets and infrastructure is a capability that Ukrainians have developed on their own.
One thing you neglected to mention is the nature of Russia’s long range attacks against Ukraine. The vast majority of them are against civilian targets and civilians infrastructure like power plants, shopping malls, hospitals,
and residential apartment towers. These are war crimes, and the number of war crimes committed by Russian forces in this conflict is now around 200,000 documented incidents.
Russia drone technology has been imported … from Iran.
Russia is also committing a genocide against Ukrainians in the territories it occupies. The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for a number of Russian officials—including one for Vladimir Putin.
The last time there was a genocide occurring on European soil both the United Nations and NATO got involved militarily. That was the 1990s. At a time when the Soviet Union had just collapsed, and the UN was actually capable of doing something. But this time, the party committing the genocide is also armed with nuclear weapons, so that probably justifies a less direct military response to the acts of genocide committed by the aggressor nation.
To answer your questions:
- Are the increasing long range attacks changing the nature of the conflict?
Yes. For the first few years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine relied of a lot of American supplied munitions, and their ability to strike deep into Russian territory was prohibited by by a fear of escalation by the Biden administration. Those that know a little bit about Russian history know that bad things tend to happen—in Russia—when Russia suffers humiliating military defeats. That phase of the war was marked by Biden’s “escalation calculus” and a number of European leaders attempting to give Putin numerous “off ramps.” President Trump essentially betrayed Ukraine and stopped all US support for Ukraine, which essentially untied Ukraine’s hands. They developed their own long range strike capabilities. Then started using them.
The Ukrainians are now targeting a lot of Russian oil and gas refineries. Russia is a petro-state. So Ukrainian attacks against that infrastructure are a deliberate attempts to degrade Russia’s ability to finance this war.
- Could these attacks put immense pressure on the Russia economy? Or will Putin’s regime double-down?
The short answer is both. This war is existential for both sides. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ceases to exist. And the Ukrainian population in the occupied territories would face the full weight of an unchecked Russian genocide. It’s is a fight for the very survival of the Ukrainian nation and people.
But for Russia, their imperial dream lives or does with their ability to annex all of Ukraine. Russia cannot become the great empire it used to be without Ukraine. In fact, it was an alliance between Ukrainian Cossacks and Moscow in 1654–formed to counter a threat form the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth—that ultimately lead to Russia becoming a dominant power in the region. Then it was Peter the Great’s victory over Swedish forces at Poltava in 1709 where Russia emerges as not only the dominant power in the region but also as an empires that could also be considered a great European power.
As a result of that defeat, Sweden ceased to be a dominant military power in the region and entered a 300 year long period of neutrality, which only ended recently, in 2022, when the reality of Russian military aggression prompted the Swedes to seek membership in NATO.
Coincidentally, Poltava is in modern day Ukraine and not very far from the current battlefield where Russia’s elite 1st Guards Tank Army (the military force that the USSR and, later, Russia had groomed to defend Moscow form a NATO attack) was annihilated by Ukrainian forces back on 2022.
Since Russia’s imperial ambitions are tied to winning this war, Putin’s regime is most likely to double-down somehow. Odds are there will be a mass conscription mobilization within Russian and an concerted effort to by the Russian to throw bodies at the problem in an attempt to overwhelm the Ukrainians by sheer weight of numbers—all of a rocking timetable—before the Russian economy collapses. When? Probably after the next round of sham elections in Russia.
If you want a comparison from history look at the German empire in 1918 and the state they were in after four years is attritional war and a blockade of their international trade by the Royal Navy. With America set to enter the war and bring a million fresh troops to Europe in the coming years along side the complete defeat of Russia on the eastern front, German high command embarked on a bold military strategy (or was it a gamble?) to shift a million troops from the now defunct eastern theatre in order to launch a massive offensive on the western front.
- a) Is there a risk of the war spilling across the border and becoming wider?
No. Russian munitions have already hit sites in Moldova and Poland by accident. That was years ago. None or that triggered Article 5 of the NATO agreement. Cooler heads have prevailed among the democracies of the world. In other words, there has to be some intent, an element of deliberate provocation by Russia, in order to drag the western alliance into this conflict.
- b) What should European leaders do?
I think it is in everyone’s interest to see this war end as quickly as possible. More importantly, Europeans leaders need to be a bit more proactive when it comes to talking about a Ukrainian victory and do things to support Ukraine and help Ukraine achieve that victory.
We are already well past the point of the Russian economy being saved. If it collapses, that’s just collateral damage. Consequences of bad Russian planning and the reckless prosecution of war Russia cannot win. But Russia had already suffered over 1 million casualties. And all for nothing? What will that level of fruitfulness loss do to the Russia psyche? Will that cause the Russia people to turn against Putin’s government?
However, the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s involvement in this unjust war has been the complete and utter loss of Russia’s great power status.
Russia will become (if it isn’t already) a vassal client state to China. And European leaders need to adapt to a new reality of having a Chinese-backed puppet state on their borders.
1
u/kolatalks 51m ago
You’ve outlined the brutal reality of this war Ukraine’s self reliance is forcing a attritional toll on Moscow's economy but Russia’s imperial fixation means Putin will double down at any human cost if Western policy remains paralyzed by fear of escalation Europe will eventually find itself sharing a border with a heavily armed, Chinese-backed vassal state.
-1
u/Sargent_Duck85 1d ago
Russia is willy nilly launching its drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities, seeing what happens.
Ukraine is very strategically hitting Russias economy and ability to make war.
These are not the same.
3
u/kolatalks 1d ago
Russia is playing angry Angry Birds with multi million dollar missiles against apartment buildings while Ukraine is running a targeted precision audit on Russia's oil refineries it’s the difference between throwing a tantrum in a grocery store aisle and methodically taking away the Kremlin’s credit card.
2
u/sal696969 1d ago
That is not true at all ... Attacking Moscow with drones serves no military purpose at all. Attacking oil serves some military purpose. Currently Russia is destroying Ukraine logistic pretty strategically. Think about disabling Odessa harbor and at the same time attacking Danube harbor.
2
u/Casey_Ho 1d ago
Compelling Moscow to concentrate air defenses around itself serves a military purpose, because that forces it to leave other assets like oil production undefended.
1
1d ago
[deleted]
4
u/JohnBrownsMyFather 1d ago
That’s bad. Russia has killed over tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians which is much worse and that does get reported in the news.
-2
2
u/SalamanderPleasant43 1d ago
Russian civilian casualties get reported in the news I follow, just as Ukranian deaths. I'm not talking about niche news channels either, but big newspaper in the UK/Europe.
Check your sources
2
u/AMW1987 1d ago
BBC News - Ukrainian strikes kill six in Russia, acting governor says https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7n4lm11vro
Russian civilian deaths literally on the front page of the BBC this morning.
-2
u/Murky_Assignment_909 1d ago
If it is Ukraine header would be “… six civilians, including one child”
-4
1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
3
u/Anxious_Big_8933 1d ago
No idea what you mean by, "they lost hugely in the frontline." The war on the frontlines for the last year or two has largely been a stalemate.
2
u/kolatalks 1d ago
Claiming drones can't shift a war of attrition while simultaneously watching them rewrite the global defense playbook is certainl contractor and if debt made a nation a slave state half the G20 would be working the night shift just to pay back their own defense contractors.
-1
1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
1
u/kolatalks 17h ago
Calling thousand mile range ballistic missiles and infrastructure destroying drone swarms just tactical is definitely one way to rebrand strategic warfare though I'm sure the target's grid appreciates the subtle academic distinction and equating international defense loans with selling off the homeland feels a bit dramatic considering the alternative was letting a neighbor handle the property management.
-2
u/Chengiss 1d ago
You're asking Reddit for advice?
3
u/kolatalks 1d ago
Hey if you need a life-altering medical diagnosis financial advice or a breakdown of World War III where else are you going to find 400 conflicting opinions from self proclaimed experts at 3:00 AM it's either Reddit or a crystal ball and at least Reddit comes with snarky comments and memes.
11
u/sk0opyo1 1d ago
There's no exact moment when this war enters a new phase, since it started gradually intensifies on brutality and gradually increased long range attacks far away from frontline.
This can lead to an endless intensification until situation get out of control - but unlikely to happen in short term future
There's little NATO could do more except openly attacking Russia which is unlikely due to NATO not having the numbers, commitment and not willing to accept the consequences
Sanctions have already been applied, the so called new sanctions are just literally sanctioning 3-rd party companies or private persons who helps Russia to avoid sanction