When the arsenal in Toropets detonated, the blast was so large it registered as a small earthquake and some eyewitnesses likened it to a small nuclear explosion. On the night of Sept. 17, the 107th Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, a military facility about 300 miles from the Ukrainian border in the region of Tver, was struck by around 100 Ukrainian drones, destroying some of Russia’s most advanced rockets and air defense interceptors, and possibly newly arrived North Korean ballistic missiles. Three days later, another large-scale Ukrainian drone strike hit the Tikhoretsk Munitions Storage Facility in the southern Krasnodar region, a main distribution depot of Russian munitions sourced from North Korea. Well over 200 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory, the attack resulted in another huge fireball. That same night, more drones sailed into the directorate’s 23rd Arsenal, again in Tver, igniting the facility.
In a matter of days, munitions worth hundreds of millions of dollars had been destroyed. Estonian military intelligence estimates that the bombing of the 107th Arsenal destroyed two to three months’ worth of munitions alone.
These were the latest sorties of Kyiv’s fleet of homemade unmanned aerial bombs, which over the past few months have immolated air bases, fuel depots, oil refineries and ammunition stockpiles, all of them well inside Russian territory.
Ukraine is now giving as good as it gets, hitting Russia on its own turf by land, sea and air, and prompting a new debate in Western capitals as to whether NATO allies should assist it in these deep strikes or can afford to do so without triggering nuclear war.
In August, Ukraine made a well-coordinated incursion into Kursk, the first time a foreign army had invaded sovereign Russia since World War II. Despite early Western forecasts that this operation would be swiftly and severely reversed by a Russian counterstrike, Ukrainian forces continue to hold an expanse of territory roughly the size of Los Angeles and have so far deflected from Russian efforts to dislodge them by invading from other axes. In square mileage, this surprise tactical victory eclipsed in the space of two weeks Russia’s yearlong advance in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, where Moscow has committed enormous resources in manpower and artillery. According to members of the Ukrainian military interviewed by New Lines, at least some of these resources have now been redeployed to Kursk, partially fulfilling one of the stated aims of the offensive.
Though military cartographers and statisticians may assess these gains and losses as a decidedly mixed result after Kyiv’s third summer of fighting, Ukraine has also been making gains elsewhere, namely in the field of arms development. It is now manufacturing a fleet of combat and reconnaissance drones, both airborne and naval, as well as its own long-range missiles. Kyiv is using these weapons to do what Washington still refuses to allow it to do with Western equivalents: strike at Russian air bases, command-and-control hubs, logistics centers and energy infrastructure, all deep in Russia’s interior.
If the Kremlin entered the war under the “rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them,” to borrow a phrase from Sir Arthur Harris, the commander in chief of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force Bomber Command during World War II, Ukraine has spent the last months of 2024 bringing the war home to Russia and to Russians, with devastating effect. Ukrainian drone attacks have become so common that some enterprising Russian insurance companies have even started providing dedicated home insurance against drone attacks.
The only surprise is that this comes as any surprise.
During the Soviet era, Ukraine was a military-industrial powerhouse, home to the largest cargo aircraft ever built, the Antonov An-225 Mriya (the Russians destroyed it at start of the full-scale invasion), not to mention the entire line of T-64 main battle tanks and R-36M ballistic missiles, the introduction of which caused sleepless nights among Western military planners at the height of the Cold War — which is partly why NATO codenamed them “Satan.” Contemporary Ukraine has tapped into this heritage, and its engineers have gone to work again, this time to fight their former metropole and to make up for the American restriction on the use of Western artillery rockets and cruise missiles to target Russia.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries, Kyiv’s defense industrial base now commands 300,000 employees spread across 500 enterprises — four-fifths of them privately owned. Major Ukrainian public figures and charitable organizations have supported the effort by raising money and supporting the manufacture of drones.
Other Ukrainian civil society actors and volunteers have also turned hobbyist racing drones into remotely piloted, precision-guided munitions. FPV (first-person view) drones have become one of the most lethal weapons of the war — and one that Russia has copied to equal effect. Piloted by technicians stationed miles away wearing a virtual reality-style headset that captures the flight path as though they were on board, FPVs chase down soldiers on foot, on motorbikes or in armored vehicles and pound into command centers and military-occupied buildings. Recordings show everything until the moment of impact when the screen ominously turns to white noise.
So terrifying are FPVs — and so difficult to evade owing to their small size, speed and maneuverability — that Russian troops have committed suicide rather than face a grisly death from above. They’re also incredibly cheap and easy to mass produce, costing on average $300 to $500 depending on the components used. As such, these drones account for the majority of casualties on both sides, according to Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces.
For all the domestic innovation, Ukraine insists it still needs to use foreign weapons systems to go after strategic targets in Russia. The U.K., which was the first country to supply long-range munitions to Ukraine and has been one of Kyiv’s more bullish allies in the war, has been in favor of lifting such restrictions. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has even been lobbying European allies, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to support a proposal to allow Ukraine to use European-provided long-range weapons inside Russia without U.S. approval, Bloomberg recently reported. Other British officials were reported to be holding similar talks with their French and German counterparts.
There are growing indications that Washington is also coming around to this point of view. According to sources in the Biden administration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is “fully in favor” of letting Ukraine strike back but faces resistance among those fearful of escalation with Russia, including at the National Security Council and the Pentagon. During a recent trip to Kyiv, Blinken stated that since the start of the war, the U.S. has been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield evolves. “From day one, we have adjusted and adapted,” Blinken said after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Needs have changed as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we will continue to do this.”
These adaptations, while welcome, often come too late to save Ukrainian lives. After the Russian incursion into the northeastern region of Kharkiv in 2024, U.S. restrictions preventing Ukraine from striking targets on the Russian side of the border were lifted. Had they been lifted before the incursion, a member of Ukraine’s Kraken special forces unit told New Lines during a visit to the front in May, the Russian invasion could have been prevented entirely. An unknown number of Ukrainian casualties could have been prevented, and the city of Vovchansk would not have been razed to the ground.
Telegraphing to Washington that Russia can absorb losses on its own territory without starting World War III may be why the guns of August have been firing overtime.
Apart from the Kursk operation, the end of summer has seen the successful use of Ukraine’s long-range drone program. On the night of Aug. 2, these flying bombs struck the Morozovsk air base in Rostov, approximately 165 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory. The base’s ammunition dump housed hundreds of glide bombs, deadly air-dropped munitions that can destroy entire buildings and fighting positions in a single hit. The dump was obliterated in the Ukrainian strike, which also destroyed at least one Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber and almost certainly damaged two more, plus airfield infrastructure.
Days later, on Aug. 8, another Ukrainian drone strike targeted Lipetsk air base (250 miles from the border), a major training center for the Russian air force. The ammunition dump at the base was likewise also completely destroyed, with the other buildings at the facility suffering damage as well. Then, on Aug. 22, Ukraine’s drones bombed Marinovka air base in what was possibly the most successful strike to date, destroying at least one more Su-34 and likely destroying or heavily damaging four more aircraft. The base’s facilities suffered extreme damage, with hangars, ammunition stores and emergency vehicles all taking hits.
“No individual strike tells us that much, but it’s the growing number and mass of systems involved that are most important,” Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, told New Lines. “If Ukraine can wage a comprehensive ranged campaign against the Russian military, it will allow it to degrade Russian production, logistics, command and control. The types of targets which usually determine the outcome of wars.”
Just the fact that Ukraine can routinely and successfully target such air bases will have an impact on Russian air force operations, according to Lt. Col. Jahara Matisek, a U.S. Air Force pilot and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, who spoke in a personal capacity. “The biggest benefit is that it is forcing the Russian air force farther away from Ukraine, which decreases Russian ability to lob missiles and bombs into Ukraine.” He explained that it would also provide Ukraine with an opportunity to establish localized air superiority, giving Ukrainian ground offensives a greater ability to mass forces and maneuver in the open without fear of being attacked from the air.
Russia will continue to struggle to defend itself against Ukrainian drones, Matisek believes, because its air defense networks were designed to fend off a large-scale NATO and U.S. attack, rather than smaller, slower drones flying from Ukraine. “Cold War assumptions about how the U.S. and NATO would attack the USSR meant that Russian air defenses are oriented in that fashion. Hence, Russia likely never designed an air defense network to defend against Ukrainian incursions.”
To ward off Ukraine’s drones, Russia has instead opted for ad hoc measures such as painting the outlines of fake aircraft on the concrete hard stands and covering real ones under dozens of old tires — not the best form of camouflage against weapons that don’t rely on visual sensors to find their targets. The most effective way Russia defends against current Ukrainian attacks, however, is to simply fly all airworthy planes away from incoming drones, something that would be entirely ineffective should supersonic long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, be allowed to target them.
Ukraine isn’t just pounding planes on the tarmac. Deep strikes have been directed at Russia’s strategic oil infrastructure, such as refineries, depots and even export ports. For instance, on Aug. 17 Ukrainian drones targeted the Kavkaz oil depot, a large storage facility in Proletarsk, in Rostov, causing a catastrophic fire that continued to burn for over two weeks. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fuel was destroyed in one night, and the Proletarsk facility will be functionally useless for the foreseeable future. (Russian authorities eventually drafted in a number of Orthodox priests in an attempt to invoke divine intervention to put out the fire — a further sign of Moscow’s fecklessness in the face of these attacks.) Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 28, Ukraine hit the Atlas oil depot, another large storage facility, also in Rostov, precipitating yet another multiday fire but not before 40% of the facility’s fuel tanks had burned to the ground. Then, on Sept. 1, a wave of Ukrainian drones struck the Moscow Refinery, located just outside the Russian capital.
An assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that Kyiv has so far disrupted 14% of Russia’s oil refining capacity and driven up domestic fuel prices by 20%-30% as of mid-March. This might have gone down well in Washington, given the attention paid to hobbling Russia’s war-oriented economy through sanctions, but such was not the case. The Biden administration responded to Ukraine’s targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure by expressing its displeasure, citing the risk of rising global oil prices (the implication being that this would hurt the Democrats in November’s election). Self-deterrence has been a constant in U.S. security assistance, but Ukrainians and oil industry analysts alike greeted this American grumble with bemusement. Russia’s hydrocarbons industry keeps its tanks and personnel carriers moving and is thus a viable strategic target.
As with the incursion into Kursk, the impact of these strikes is not just physical but also psychological: They make a population largely indifferent to a foreign conflict acutely aware of its domestic costs. Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has seen the largest occupation of Russian territory since World War II, and like its deep strike weaponry, has shown Russia and the world that Ukraine retains the ability to inflict significant pain on its adversary.
The arrival of even more sophisticated Ukrainian drones will likely compound the pain for the Russians. On Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day — the third such celebration since the start of the full-scale invasion that was meant to take all of three days to be decided — Zelenskyy announced the successful employment of the new Ukrainian Palyanytsia. Named for a type of bread, the Ukrainian word for which is notoriously difficult for native Russian speakers to pronounce and is thus a convenient way of ferreting out Russian spies and collaborators, the drone will produce “unpronounceable results,” according to Zelenskyy. The Palyanytsia is powered by a rocket engine, meaning it will fly far faster than Ukraine’s current, mostly propellor-driven suicide drones, giving Russian aircraft less time to scramble out of the impact zone when used against their air bases. Days later, Zelenskyy also announced the successful test of an as yet unnamed Ukrainian ballistic missile. While he did not specify the exact type, it is likely the Hrim-2, a short-range ballistic missile that has been in development for over a decade, funding for which was supposedly earmarked by Ukraine’s then-defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, in 2023.
These new weapon systems come a year after the introduction into Ukraine’s arsenal of a land-attack version of its Neptune anti-ship missile, a munition Kyiv famously used to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship cruiser, the Moskva, in the first year of the war. On Aug. 22, a Neptune cruise missile destroyed a Russian ferry loaded with fuel tanks in the Kerch Strait. “While Palyanytsias and Neptunes can achieve many objectives, there are tasks that only ATACMS, Storm Shadows and other weapons from our partners can fulfill,” Zelenskyy said.
From a logical and legal perspective, there is no reason to prohibit Ukraine from using Western weaponry to strike any legal Russian military target. American artillery and cluster munitions are already killing tens of thousands of Russians inside Ukraine, and the British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missile conspicuously powdered the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, claimed by Moscow to be an integral part of “Russia” since 2014.
There has also been a consistent pattern of the Kremlin making exaggerated threats when a Western capability has been on the table for delivery to Ukraine, only for it to later claim, once those weapons have been delivered, that they’re insignificant or that Russian forces have already destroyed all of them. This happened with HIMARS, Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets.
The West needs to stop allowing the Kremlin to set the rules of the game, Timothy Snyder, a European historian and professor at Yale University, told New Lines on a recent visit to Kyiv. “It’s the same psychological mistake where you’re playing by the rules that the other side has set for you as opposed to the rules of international law, which allow for an invaded country to defend itself.”
Washington’s escalations have routinely been met by Moscow’s anticlimactic responses. Nor does Russia stand to gain anything by resorting to nuclear weapons just because the munitions destroying its air bases, command centers and logistics hubs are made in the U.S. (or the U.K. or France) instead of in Ukraine. On the contrary, even the use of a tactical nuke in Ukrainian territory would yield no advantage on the battlefield. It would, however, transform Russia into even more of a pariah state overnight, alienate its critical ally China and likely lead to nuclear proliferation in places where neither Moscow nor Beijing would desire to see it, such as Kazakhstan, Finland, Turkey, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. As has no doubt been communicated, such an escalation would be met by a NATO conventional military response that would do even greater damage to Russia than anything currently on offer from Ukrainian ATACMS or Storm Shadows. Sergei Markov, someone often used as a hard-line voice of the Russian government in the Western press, told The Washington Post recently that the White House’s eventual rescission of the deep strike restriction has already been factored in by Russia’s war planners, who consider the decision a fait accompli — this in an article about Ukraine’s serial violation of Russia’s supposed “red lines.” Tellingly, Markov made no reference to weapons of mass destruction.
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