Mick Ryan reports in Futura Doctrina:
Ukraine's strategic strike campaign against Russian territory has now surpassed Russia’s long-range strike effort. Ukraine launched 7,000 long-range drones against Russian military targets in March 2026 alone, overtaking Russia in volume for the first time. The Russian air alert system issued warnings 2,000 kilometres from Ukraine on 5 May, illustrating the reach of Ukrainian drones. Ukraine has targeted oil refineries, naval vessels, military airfields and logistics nodes. Russian aviation has been forced to relocate thousands of kilometres east. Ukrainian drones recently struck Shagol airfield in the Chelyabinsk region, 1,700 kilometres from the front line. (And) Ukraine's ‘middle strike’ activities (20-300km from the front) might cut off Russian land access to Crimea, as Ukrainian forces have now established drone primacy over some southern Russian lines of communication, including the route from Mariupol to Crimea.The frontlines across eastern and southern Ukraine remained violent in the week of 11 to 17 May 2026, although there was limited exchange of territory. Ukrainian General Staff reporting, aggregated through EMPR.media and corroborated by the Institute for the Study of War, recorded 241 combat engagements across a single 24-hour period on 14 May alone, representing one of the highest daily totals since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Russian forces continue to press hardest in the Donetsk direction, with sustained assault activity reported around Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, Toretske, and along the Novopavlivka axis. Despite months of Russian effort, Ukrainian defenders have held the principal defensive lines in this sector, inflicting disproportionate casualties on attacking infantry columns.
The latest Russia Matters update notes that in the past month, Russia has lost 45 square miles. For two months running, Russia has been losing ground.
Despite this, senior Russian military commanders have put on their happy faces and briefed Putin that Russian ground forces are advancing beyond Kupyansk. The key problem with this narrative is that the Russians have not even captured Kupyansk, let alone commenced an advance west of the city. As today’s update from the Institute for the Study of War notes:
Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov met with the Russian Western Grouping of Forces on May 16 and made a series of false claims about the situation in the Kupyansk, Borova, and Lyman directions.[1] Gerasimov claimed that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupyansk toward Shevchenkove… Gerasimov identified Russia’s next operational objective after the seizure of Kupyansk as Shevchenkove, but Russian forces are not close to seizing Kupyansk.
Image: Institute for the Study of War For the fifth consecutive month, Russian losses have outpaced the Kremlin’s ability to recruit replacements. Ukraine’s Defence Minister confirmed that over 35,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in April 2026 alone, continuing a pattern that defence analyst commentary tracked on specialist platforms including Ronin’s Grips and United24 Media.
The Deep Strike Campaigns. This week, Russia conducted a massive aerial assault on Kyiv overnight on 13 to 14 May. The attack on Kyiv, reported in detail by CNN and the Kyiv Independent, involved more than 1,560 drones over a two-day period, striking residential buildings in the capital, killing at least seventeen people and injuring dozens more. The Kyiv mayor described it as the largest-ever attack on the capital. A nine-storey apartment building was struck, with rescuers working through rubble to locate survivors. Energy infrastructure, including a power substation and a high-voltage line, was also damaged.
Image: Strategic Aviation on Telegram The Ukrainian Air Force produced the following interception figures: they shot down 41 missiles and 652 UAVs, broken down to:
0 out of 3 Kh-47 Kinzhal aero ballistic missiles (launched from Lipetsk region),
12 out of 18 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles (from Bryansk and Kursk region),
29 out of 35 Kh-101 cruise missiles (Volgograd region) and
652 out of 675 strike UAVs (Bryansk, Kursk, Orel, Rostov, Crimea).
Image: @DefenceU As I sit down to write this update on a Sunday morning, eastern Australian time, a Ukrainian drone attack is underway against the Russian capital. At least 50 drones have been sighted so far, although as the hours pass, we will learn more about the scale of the attack. A recent update, which appears to show a Ukrainian drone having struck a target in the vicinity of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport is below.
Image: @OSINTtechnical During the week, the Ukrainian president issued a social media post about Ukraine’s thinking and intentions with its long-range strike campaign. Zelenskyy wrote that:
First, we are defining targets for our next long-range sanctions against Russia over this war and the strikes against our cities and villages. Ukraine will not allow any of the aggressor’s strikes that take the lives of our people to go unpunished. We are entirely justified in our responses against Russia’s oil industry, military production, and those directly responsible for committing war crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s strategic strike campaign against Russian territory has now surpassed Russia’s own long-range strike effort. As documented by United24 Media and analysed by the Atlantic Council, Ukraine launched some 7,000 long-range drones against Russian military targets in March 2026 alone, overtaking Russia in total long-range strike volume for the first time.
Image: United24 The Russian air alert system issued warnings 2,000 kilometres from Ukraine on 5 May, illustrating the geographic reach of Ukrainian drone operations. The Ukrainian campaign has targeted oil refineries, naval vessels, military airfields and logistics nodes. Russian aviation, once operating from bases close to Ukraine, has been forced to relocate thousands of kilometres east. Ukrainian drones have recently struck Shagol airfield in the Chelyabinsk region, 1,700 kilometres from the front line.
Ukrainian strikes on Russian port terminals and oil infrastructure during spring 2026 have disrupted Russian energy exports and damaged refinery capacity, according to reporting tracked through Stefan Korshak’s Substack and open-source analysts monitoring satellite imagery of refinery fires. This week, targets hit include:
Taman Naftogaz terminal, near the Kerch Strait.
The Astrakhan Gas Processing Plant.
The Nurino Transneft oil terminal in the Volga region.
An oil refinery in Yaroslavl.
A large air defence radar in Donetsk.
The Ryazan oil refinery.
A Russian navy minesweeper and a missile boat in the Caspian Sea.
Russian military aircraft.
Ukrainian drone targeting a Russian Be-200 amphibious aircraft during the week. Source: @ZelenskyyUa The deeper strategic aim is clear: to make Russia’s vast geographic depth a liability rather than a shield. NATO-era doctrine always treated Russian depth as a formidable defensive advantage, but Ukrainian drone operators are systematically proving otherwise.
Interestingly, it is the ‘middle strike’ activities (strikes in the range of 20-300km from the frontline) of the Unmanned Systems Force which might generate another strategic impact: cutting off Russian land access to Crimea. As Stefan Korshak details in his latest update, Ukrainian forces have now established drone primacy over some of the southern Russian lines of communication, including the route from Mariupol to Crimea.
Korshak describes how a key contributor to this campaign has been “new strike drones that are very effective in the 50–150 km range envelope (Bulava, RAM-2X, and Blyskavka), a reconnaissance drone that operates persistently in that envelope (Shark), [and] bigger numbers of all those weapons.” While this might be a useful negotiating point for peace talks, it also useful operational shaping should Ukrainian forces wish to conduct more offensive operations in the south as well as isolate Russian forces in Crimea.
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