In recent months, Russia and Ukraine have escalated the war with strategic strikes using drones and missiles. The combatants have entered a new operational phase that extends beyond a few dozen kilometers on either side of the front line.
In March, Russian forces launched over 3,000 airstrikes and drone strikes in Ukraine, compared to 2,712 in February. Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory exceeded 1,400, spread across twenty regions, some located thousands of kilometers away. Moscow deployed over 6,500 long-range drones and 141 missiles in April, a 2% increase from March, with a significant number of daytime strikes. According to Kiev, 88% of drones and missiles were intercepted. The sustained increase in the intensity of strikes in both camps is continuous and not sporadic.
Russian aerial strategy includes mass nighttime drone attacks to overwhelm air defenses and identify vulnerabilities, combined with missile attacks targeting logistics and energy infrastructure. Over 54 months of war, Russia has fired approximately 5,800 guided missiles at Ukraine (excluding drones). These missiles, upgraded since 2022, incorporate electronic countermeasures, thermal decoys, and reprogrammed flight profiles, reducing the interception rates by Ukrainian defenses.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has shifted its focus from military targets near the border to striking directly at Russia’s export revenue sources. At the end of March, Ukrainian drones and missiles targeted oil infrastructure after systematically destroying Russian air defense systems. This included major oil terminals in Primorsk and Oust-Louga, as well as a refinery in Kirishi (located about 800 km from the Ukrainian border) in the Leningrad region.
These strikes temporarily disrupted around 40% of Russia’s crude oil export capacity. Kiev aims to significantly reduce Russia’s war financing revenues, especially with ongoing conflicts and temporary US exemptions increasing Moscow’s oil export revenues.
At least 12 oil infrastructures were hit in April, with nearly 300 out of about 2,500 oil tanks in European Russia destroyed or damaged. As a result, Russian refinery production in May hit a seventeen-year low due to Ukrainian attacks. Kiev’s primary goal now is to disrupt the supply chains of this critical sector in the Russian economy, a major funding source for the Kremlin’s war budget. Long-range strike warfare has become a pivotal operational focus.
(1) To maintain its current level of intercepting Russian attacks, Ukraine needs about 4,800 surface-to-air missiles per year, surpassing current Western transfer capabilities. Furthermore, the US used a significant amount of precision munitions during the ‘Epic Fury’ operation against Iran in a few weeks. Currently, Russian missile arsenal is deemed more extensive, diversified, and harder to intercept than at the start of the 2022 invasion, according to Norwegian experts.
