Russian missiles and Iranian-supplied drones continue to slam into Ukrainian hospitals and apartment blocks with regularity. These are not precision strikes aimed at military targets; they are clumsy, often wildly inaccurate terror attacks designed to break the will of the Ukrainian people.
In this, they echo the Nazi V-1 and V-2 “vengeance weapons” of 1944-45. Those terror weapons killed thousands of civilians in London and Antwerp, but achieved little militarily. They also mirror the Luftwaffes Blitz on British cities in 1940. The bombs fell â but British resolve only hardened.
The same dynamic is playing out now in Ukraine. Every Russian strike on civilians strengthens Ukrainian determination to fight on.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has seized the initiative with a weapon the Russians has yet to counter: massed, AI-enabled drones and long-range cruise missiles produced at scale and employed with laser-like focus for operational and strategic effect.
Operationally, Ukrainian strikes have methodically dismantled Russian logistics across the southern theater from the Donbas approaches all the way to Crimea. Drone strikes on fuel convoys, ammunition trucks, rail hubs and bridges have created chronic shortages of fuel, water, ammunition and food for Russian troops.
Reports from occupied Crimea and the southern land corridor document rationing, long lines at gas stations and mounting chaos. Ukrainian strikes have effectively placed large portions of the Russian southern front under a logistics lockdown.
With supply lines under constant interdiction, half or more of Russias southern grouping now operates under severe strain â a situation that risks localized collapse if the pressure continues. This, while Russian territorial gains have slowed to a crawl â and even reversed.
Strategically, Ukraine has accomplished something extraordinary. Its sustained campaign of long-range drone and missile strikes against Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure intensified dramatically in the last month. Kyiv has inflicted damage on Russias fuel production capacity that took the U.S. Army Air Forces two full years of strategic bombing to achieve against Nazi Germany in World War II.
Major refineries from Moscow to the south have been hit repeatedly. Processing capacity has been slashed by more than a third. Russia now faces a genuine fuel crisis: lines at pumps, regional shortages and emergency measures. Putin himself has acknowledged the “difficult period.”
The cruel arithmetic is now unavoidable. Who gets the remaining fuel? Front-line troops? The Russian militarys broader needs? Civilian motorists? Trucks and trains hauling food and goods? Farmers trying to bring in the harvest? A food crisis looms as transport and agriculture feel the squeeze.
Ukraine has gone further. Long-range strikes have also targeted Russian military electronics plants and missile production facilities. In June, Ukrainian forces hit a key electronics plant in Voronezh that produces components for Iskander missiles and other systems. When new Russian missiles emerge from damaged factories, they will fly w
