A year ago, the Ukrainian government decided to take the fight directly to Russia. It hasnāt looked back since.
A year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky articulated a strategy of ābringing the war back to Russia.ā āThe war was brought from Russia, and it is to Russia that the war must be pushed back. They must be the ones forced into peace. They are the ones who must be pressured to ensure security,ā Zelensky said in March 2025.
Since then, and ever more intensely this year, Ukraine has been pursuing a āstrategic neutralizationā of assets in Russia. This means scaling back the hard-fought, casualty-intensive thrusts to claw back occupied territory that have cost Ukraine so much in terms of blood and treasure, and instead embracing long-range, asymmetric warfare to degrade Russiaās economy, rupture its military manufacturing, and deflate civilian morale. This spring, thereās every sign that this strategy is bearing fruitāand perhaps even shifting the battlefield calculus in the warās fifth, grinding year.
Almost daily, Ukraineās new weaponry capabilities, in particular its own long-range missiles and high-precision drones, are wreaking havoc where they hit energy infrastructure, arms and explosives factories, and military command and logistics centers. On the home front, Ukraine is playing defense, killing or wounding about 35,000 Russians a month, according to Ukrainian sources, bringing some estimates of the warās total death toll to 352,000 Russian service members.
According to Ulf Brunnbauer, a historian at the University of Regensburg, Ukraineās object is to show its Western supporters that āthey have not only staying power but can really harm Russia, thus helping their case for continuous support. This puts Kyiv in a better position for eventual peace talks by increasing the incentives for Russia to settle for a compromise.ā
The battered oil refineries smoldering across Russia underscore Ukraineās success in choking Russiaās economic lifeline. In April and thus this month, the Ukrainian armed forces have hit 20 oil refineries and export terminals. The dramatic images of Ukrainian drone strikes on the Tuapse oil refinery on Russiaās Black Sea coast on April 28 displayed a Russia at war and reeling: For weeks, thick black smoke spewed out of the site and blanketed more than 300 kilometers of southern Russia, including three cities.
The strikes, some hitting as far as 1,750 km from Ukraineāthatās 2.5 times farther than the range possible four years agoāhave rendered Russia unable to fully capitalize on the high petroleum prices caused by the Iran war.
According to Al Jazeera, Ukraine has deterred Russia from reaping the gigantic windfall profits that it was counting on from oil exports, some of which the United States made possible by lifting individual sanctions in the context of the Iran war and energy crisis. Ukraineās long-range strike campaign against Russian port and energy infrastructure in āa calculated bid to prevent Russia from offloading oil onto tankers,ā Al Jazeera reports. In other words: Ukraine found a way to check the effects of a U.S. policy that had originally looked devastating for Ukraine. In March, Russiaās seaborne oil shipments dropped by roughly 300,000 barrels per day, partly as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries. According to Bloomberg, average output at Russian oil refineries fell to 4.69 million barrels per day in April, a record low since December 2009.
And the strikes on military installations such as air defense systems, airfields, and armament plants appear to be thrwarting Russiaās ground war in Ukraine, tooāKyivās most immediate priority. Russiaās forward momentum on the battlefield in Ukraine has ground to a virtual halt. Its armed forces even suffered a net loss of territory in April, for the first time since August 2024, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank. Russiaās anticipated spring offensive is thus far a washout.
Just this weekend, Ukraineās long-range strike capabilities reached deep into the Russian heartland, hammering its military tech industry in locations previously considered untouchable due to their closeness to the capital. Long-range attack drones struck Angstrem Microelectronics in Zelenograd, a main cog in Russiaās semiconductor industry. And drones also damaged MKB Raduga, the nerve center for Russiaās cruise missile program, in Dubna, just 80 miles north of Moscow.
āThis strategy is all about the battlefield in Ukraine. Itās about stopping Russia from taking the Donbas and forcing it into negotiations that Ukraine can control,ā said ISW analyst George Barros. āThat should be the basis for a settlement.ā
Until now, Barros argued, Russian President Vladimir Putin has operated āas if it doesnāt matter how high costs run as long as Russia keeps making gains and the Westās will dwindles. The idea was that Russia will simply outlast them and win in long run.ā But Russia is obviously now wavering in a way that it hasnāt before, Barros said.
There are signs everywhere that Russia is panicking but perhaps none greater than Putinās call for a cease-fire on May 9, RussiaāsĀ Victory Day national holiday, when it commemorates the Soviet Unionās victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, usually with plenty of pomp and bluster. Putin pleaded with Ukraine not to disrupt the celebrations, and the usually uber-martial parade burnished no military hardware at all this yearāa stinging admission that Ukraine has the capability of striking a top-tier public event in the middle of Moscow in the middle of the day.
According to the Moscow Times, an independent Russian media outlet, the Kremlin is rethinking its war goals and the narrative that it tells Russians about the āspecial military operation,ā as it calls the war, downplaying its significance. Russian officials are apparently preparing to frame a peace deal with Ukraine as a āvictory.ā The Kremlin wants to shift public messaging away from its previous goal of capturing all of Ukraine, and in particular Kyiv, and toward holding what Russia already hasāoccupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraineāfirmly in its hand.
And thereās even evidence of discontent among Russian political strategists regarding the warās high cost. High-ranking officials have begun to question aloud the warās continuation, according to the Moscow Times. Reportedly, they believe that taking the entire Donbas requires a full-fledged wartime economy and countrywide mass mobilization. This, they warned, would dangerously exhaust Russiaās resources, break the economy, and accelerate already dire population decline.
These setbacks for Russia are increasingly reflected in public opinion, which has largely supported the war until now. Although Russian polling shows that 73 percent of Russians approve of Putinās performanceāa robust number, were this applied to Western politicosāit is the lowest figure recorded since February 2022, according to the Public Opinion Foundation.
Most Russia experts doubt that Ukraine pins any hope on Russians rising up to overthrow Putin. The authoritarian stateās controls are too muscular, and just to make sure that this occurs to no one, Putin has clamped down on social media, such as the widely used Telegram channels, which are a widely accessed media source for many Russians.
āPublic opinion,ā said Barros of ISW, āis important to the Kremlin today in a way it wasnāt during the Cold War. Our team has been astonished about the extent to which Putin has made militarily questionable decisions in order to maximize regime stability and minimize discontent at home.ā
And the deep-strike capabilities arenāt the āonly cards that Ukraine has now,ā said Fedir Serdiuk, a Ukrainian Defense Ministry advisor, in reference to U.S. President Donald Trumpās contention that Ukraine ādoesnāt have the cardsā to win the war.
āUkraine relies on state-of-the-art unmanned surface vehicles and sensors to navigate and control the Black Sea,ā Serdiuk said. āMillions of first-person-view drones, surveillance platforms, and much improved intelligence tech has helped sustain defense on the ground.ā Serdiuk also pointed to ever more effective special operations such as Operation Spiderweb, a covert drone attack deep inside Russia in June 2025 that took out a significant portion of Russiaās strategic aviation capabilities, including Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers.
Brunnbauer, the historian, doubted that Ukraine believes that it can push the Russians back, at least in the short or medium term. āBut what they are showing to the world, to themselves, and to the Russians who care to knowā he said, āis that time is not necessarily on Russiaās sideāand that they can survive without much American help.ā
