Ukraine has set Russia ablaze – and Putin’s humiliation is complete

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A year ago, it looked as though Donald Trump was set to force Ukraine into an ignominious surrender.

Today, Ukrainian drones rain fire on Moscow and St Petersburg and the country’s troops are gaining ground on the battlefield, in a deeply humiliating spectacle for Vladimir Putin.

The Russian President’s ill-judged war is now publicly and repeatedly putting the Russian heartlands in jeopardy, with the G7 this week noting Kyiv’s “new momentum” and “progress on the battlefield” after years of slow yet gradual Russian gains.

Ukraine is daring to hope that Russia will lose. Kyrylo Budanov, chief of staff to Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said the prospect of a peace deal by winter was realistic.

“The point where the Ukrainians are capable of striking Moscow and St Petersburg … hundreds and hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian territories, that’s a pretty significant sign that Russia has lost control of the momentum of the war,” said Jacob Parakilas, research leader in defence, security and justice at Rand Europe.

Black smoke rises from the refinery in Moscow on 18 June after a drone strike (Photo: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The war had been characterised by momentum swings between Russia and Ukraine, but Parakilas pointed to “substantial differences this time, which are more about the strategic situation and the picture at home in Russia”.

Russia losing ground and under siege

The character of the war is shifting in favour of a rapidly innovating Ukraine, while Russia struggles to adapt. Russia’s theory that its meat-grinder tactics would overcome its vastly outnumbered foe in eastern Ukraine no longer holds.

Russian advances are stagnating as Kyiv employs new tactics and concepts to break out of attritional warfare. Independent battlefield tracking groups have reported Russia’s advances slowing or reversing for the ​first time since 2023. Oleksandr Syrski, Ukraine’s top military ​commander, said this month that his forces had recaptured more than 600 sq km of territory this year.

Russia is also incurring casualties at a faster rate than it can recruit replacements, reports suggest. It suffered 9,000 more casualties than it was able to replace in January, said Bloomberg. Its recruitment rate in March was below its loss rate for the fourth month in a row, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF).

Media restrictions in Russia cannot prevent news of setbacks filtering through, especially as Ukraine’s devastating long-range strike campaign to cripple Russia’s oil exports brings the war home.

Footage of a Ukrainian attack drone hitting a storage tank at the Moscow Oil Refinery this morning, sending the tank lid perfectly soaring hundreds of feet. pic.twitter.com/2GIHEGk52M — OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 18, 2026

Huge explosions after drone hits on oil refineries and military bases deep inside the country are an increasingly common sight, even in the better-defended cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. On Thursday, drones and missiles struck across Moscow in Ukraine’s biggest air raid on the city in two years, setting a major ⁠oil refinery on fire and forcing the temporary closure of local airports.

Military bloggers, influencers and the business community are voicing discontent. As inflation and taxes rise, economic officials routinely complain about the burden of the war and politicians have called for its end. The leader of Russia’s Communist Party warned that the stagnating economy risked a 1917-style revolution. Putin’s approval levels have fallen to their lowest since the war began.

Muscovites try to protect themselves from carcinogenic smoke after Ukrainian drones hit an oil refinery in the city’s south-east. Officials have warned citizens to keep their windows closed (Photo: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Since April, Ukraine has ramped up air strikes against crucial infrastructure behind enemy lines, using homemade drones on targets close to the front including air defences, logistics centres, command posts, fuel supplies and the road and rail networks used to transport troops and matériel to the front.

Video feeds from first-person view drones show them hurtling towards military convoys, leaving blazing depots, the charred husks of trucks and railways in flames.

Kyiv is targeting areas of southern Russian and occupied Ukraine, in particular the T-0509 highway connecting the occupied cities of Mariupol and Donetsk, and the R-280 “Novorossiya” supply route to Crimea, which Ukraine’s troops have dubbed the “the highway of death”.

Zelensky said Ukraine’s mid-range strike campaign was a “priority”, saying last month that Ukraine had quadrupled the number of such strikes since February and that “there will be even more”.

Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said Kyiv’s aim was to “systematically destroy enemy logistics and supply lines, stripping them of their capacity to mount offensive actions”.

Some Russian roads, railways and bridges are now unusable. On Thursday, a key railway bridge used to transport military equipment to Russian troops on the southern front was struck by a drone, sparking a blaze, according to monitoring channel Crimean Wind.

Azov returns to Mariupol. For now, through reconnaissance-strike systems.

Pilots of First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine patrol roads up to 160 km deep behind the line of contact.

In the cameras of reconnaissance-strike drones: Mariupol and enemy military targets.… pic.twitter.com/9QcTBiZr6I — First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine (@azov_media) May 8, 2026

Mid-range strikes are “expanding the kill zone and forcing Russia to divert resources to protect its supply lines and infrastructure”, said Michael C Horowitz and Erin Dumbacher of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank in the US. “This reverses a trend of Russian gains throughout 2025.”

“The mid-range strike operations appear to have already cut off some troops from supplies, namely in western Kherson and western Zaporizhzhia,” said Michael Bohnert, an engineer at Rand who has worked for the US Navy and Air Force. “Crimea is slowly becoming an island under blockade.

“Russia is out of ferries to transport fuel, unable to repair roads and bridges fast enough, and the Kerch Bridge is still not fully functional. It is not under any direct threat of seizure, but it is forcing Russia to reprioritise resources to support resupply such as shifting air defences from elsewhere.”

A fire after a Ukrainian drone hit a building in Sevastopol, Crimea, which Ukraine appears to be attempting to blockade (Photo: Sevastopol Mayor Mikhail Razvozhaev’s Telegram channel via AP)

Superior drone technology and new satellite intelligence are helping Ukraine turn the tide by facilitating strikes on parts of Russia previously out of reach.

“The Ukrainians have figured out how to hit trains 60 or 70 or 100 kilometres back in the middle-strike campaign because they have better satcoms, they have better drones, they have better artificial intelligence targeting subroutines that allow these weapons to operate and hunt, even if their connection with their operator is disrupted,” said Parakilas.

In January, Ukraine struck a deal with private US company Vantor for near real-time satellite intelligence, allowing it to see Russian traffic driving along roads in occupied Ukraine, with updates around every 15 minutes, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A Ukrainian member an Azov Brigade drone team launches a surveillance drone towards Russian positions, in the direction of Toretsk, eastern Donetsk (Photo: Roman Pilipey / AFP via Getty Images)

Ukraine is producing thousands of drones each month: this month, the defence minister Mstyslav Banik said industry could produce 20 million a year with sufficient funding. The EU approved a €90bn loan to Ukraine, including €6bn ring-fenced for drones.

Meanwhile, Russia is hampered by the military’s “centralised, top-down way of doing innovation versus this like broad-based, slightly chaotic but incredibly inventive and creative and fast-moving innovation cycle”, said Parakilas. Drones can move from prototype to frontline deployment within weeks.

Domestic developments in AI and autonomous drones mean Ukraine can continue operating when GPS is unavailable or communication links are severed, while foreign drones like the US-produced Hornet are beating Russian jamming thanks to a combination of Starlink satellite systems and AI targeting.

Russia has struggled since losing access to Starlink in February. “Russian military reliance on Starlink and Telegram has become obvious as loss of both is hampering command and control,” said Bohnert. “Russia procured a different set of drones than Ukraine did and they lack Starlink support for deep targeting.”

Anti-drone netting corridor along Kostiantynivka-Kramatorsk road in Donetsk in April (Photo: Alex Nikitenko/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Less visibly, a small revolution is happening within the Ukrainian armed forces. In recent years, Ukraine has struggled with dwindling recruits, exhausted soldiers unable to rotate from the front, and casualties exceeding new troops. Now, structural and training reforms are changing that.

Ukraine has in the past year established more than a dozen army corps, improving the quality of the training and discouraging recruits from deserting, according to Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. Units have also improved integration of infantry, uncrewed systems, artillery, and armour.

“On the front lines, they were able to create periods of dominance over the Russians that allowed the rotation of troops and even offensive gains,” Watling said. As a result, “Russian combat performance is waning. In Kyiv, there is a growing optimism that Ukraine can fight Russia to a ceasefire”.

A Ukrainian soldier firing at Russian positions near Kostiantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine this month (Photo: Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)

The Ukrainian military has also brought in battlefield management software across all units, improving operational planning for commanders, according to the Institute for the Study of War think-tank in Washington, DC. This year’s ongoing counterattacks in the south are the result.

Of course, throughout the war the Russians have shown that they can adapt, and there is every chance that they will this time too. As Moscow suffers, it is attempting to seize back the narrative of control. It is renewing attacks on Ukraine’s fortress belt in the east, and intensifying bombardment of Ukrainian cities.

Yet in Ukraine, hope is rising of forcing Putin into a peace deal, this time on Kyiv’s terms. The next few months could prove decisive.