Volodymyr Zelenskyy is gambling that taking the fight deeper into Russia will put enough pressure on Vladimir Putin to force him to get serious about peace talks. For much of the war, the Russian president has been able to shield ordinary Russians from the worst of the conflict. The Ukrainian leader is now trying to break that insulation — disrupting air travel and striking refineries, factories, warehouses and other targets deep inside Russia.
The logic is brutal but simple: Raise the economic and political cost of the war for Russians faster than Putin can raise the military and civilian costs for Ukrainians with his escalating air assaults. With that aim in mind, Ukraine mounted in August one of its heaviest waves of strikes on Russia since the war started more than four years ago. The campaign expanded quickly to target not just conventional military facilities but also oil refineries, factories, and the vast warehouses of Russia’s online retail behemoths, Wildberries and Ozon.
And ordinary Russians have expressed frustration at the domestic fuel shortages, the disruption of air travel and the upending of Russian e-commerce. Ukraine has scaled up domestic production of its attack drones as it tries to make the war unsustainable for Moscow. But there is little evidence yet that the disruption poses any serious threat to Putin’s hold on power.
Coups have been forecast before. European spymasters, Ukrainian officials and Russian exiles have issued numerous predictions that Putin’s days are numbered, that Russians will turn on him or he’ll be ousted in a Kremlin uprising by oligarchs and Russia’s elite. What Ukraine’s air campaign does appear to have done is make the war harder for ordinary Russians to ignore.
That’s significant given how the Kremlin has succeeded largely in silencing public dissent and has Russian-based media on a tight leash. Matveev added that Zelenskyy’s air campaign has exposed how the Russian military can’t fully protect the country. That was underscored in May when the Kremlin reluctantly pared back the Victory Day jamboree celebrating the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany.
Shortly after, in June, Ukraine repeatedly struck Russian oil refineries and fuel infrastructure, including around Moscow. In July, Ukrainian drones reached the Omsk refinery in Siberia, Russia’s largest, about 2,700 kilometers from Ukrainian-controlled territory, reportedly using an upgraded drone. By then, Ukrainian strikes had hit many of Russia’s major refineries, oil terminals and fuel-storage facilities.
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