Phillips O'Brien reports in his substack and Mick Ryan reports :
Ukraine this week announced its ‘Logistics Lockdown' campaign has been going on - and planned - for months. It targets the M-14 road from Rostov-on-Don in Russia, through occupied Mariupol, Berdyansk, and Melitopol, and into Crimea. Headquarters, training camps, air defence, ammunition, fuel storage and other military assets up to 100 kilometres behind the front are also targets. By three weeks ending May 30, 86 burned trucks and tankers were confirmed on the M-14. 125 destroyed trucks were seen far away. "Ukraine has increased fourfold the destruction of enemy logistics, warehouses, equipment, vehicles, command posts, and supply routes at operational depth. Data points to a clear trend: as the destruction of Russian logistics increases, assault operations along the front decreases." This will lead to a constant degradation of Russian fighting power. Supplies will decrease, command will be chaotic, losses will rise and replacements will be inadequate.
Ukrainian claims of losses of Russian material and soldiers have been surprisingly accurate since the start of the Russian full scale invasion. Their claims of losses of Russian soldiers, for instance, seem to be widely confirmed by western intelligence agencies. Just two examples. In May, Dutch intelligence released an estimate of at least 1.2 million Russian casualties (approximately 500k killed). At the end of April a UK source claimed this figure was around 1.3 million. The Ukrainian tally released a few hours ago was just over 1.3 million (see below).
Interestingly, recent claims might even be more accurate because so many of the losses are being filmed by UAV. This makes this war not only the most transparent, it makes it gorily the most “trackable” conflict in human history. The deaths of Russian soldiers and the destruction of Russian equipment are now being filmed regularly.
When it comes to the collapsing of the Russian military from behind, the most immediate thing to pay attention to, as I discussed last week, is the mid-range strike campaign. Looking for evidence from that can be seen in Ukrainian claims. Take a look at this chart of Russian losses from yesterday and see what stands out.
The figure of 1430 personnel is shocking though that is actually not the one I am talking about (more on personnel losses below). No, the one that is even more shocking is the 483 “vehicles and fuel tanks”. That is a daily record for the Ukrainians
And this week the focus on transport attacks has been made much more public by Ukraine. The Ukrainian MOD announced its ‘Logistics Lockdown’ program with an additional UAH 5 billion devoted for middle-strike capabilities. This was how they summarized it—and note how they said that this campaign has been going on (let alone planned for) for many months now.
Over the past several months, Ukraine has increased fourfold the destruction of enemy logistics, warehouses, equipment, vehicles, command posts, and supply routes at operational depth.
Data points to a clear trend: as the destruction of russian logistics increases, the number of assault operations along the line of contact decreases.
The data points that they mention are the interesting ones to track. See if the destruction of Russian trucks remains elevated in this way. You will also see reports (though often not comparative data) the destruction of warehouses and Russian command and control (C2) posts. Two days ago, the Ukrainians released statements about hitting both (see bolded text below).
In the occupied territories, an enemy Tor-M2 anti-aircraft missile system was hit in the area of the village of Berdianske, Zaporizhia region; an enemy command and observation post in the area of the village of Lyman Pershyi, Kharkiv region; an enemy logistics warehouse in the village of Aidar, Luhansk region; as well as enemy UAV command posts in the areas of the village of Tyotkino, Kursk region of Russia, the village of Komar, Donetsk region, and Nesterianka, Zaporizhia region.
Once again the Ukrainians are saying what they are doing. The Ukrainians are going for the trucks, warehouses and C2 posts—and add to that keeping the personnel losses for the Russians above replacement levels. That figure of 1430 personnel losses the other day, along with the truck losses is exactly what the Ukrainians want to see happen. The most important moment in this calculation, however will happen sometime next week when the Ukrainians release their monthly estimate of Russian losses for May and whether these are above new recruitment figures.
If it is, the trend is exactly what the Ukrainians are planning for. It will lead to a constant degradation of the Russian army and fighting power. Supplies will be decreasing, command will be chaotic, losses will be rising and replacements arriving in inadequate numbers. The remaining troops will be in worse shape and be asked to continue attacking. Along the line it will be the Russian military that will be increasingly closer to failure.
This, at least, is what the Ukrainians are saying. Take a Russian army that has to attack and collapse it from behind. The Ukrainians are not hiding their plans—hopefully the western press will not be so slow to understand it this time.
The most significant development of the past week in Ukraine has not taken place along the front line. It has unfolded 100 to 200 kilometres behind it, along the highways that connect Russia’s occupied south to Crimea and, through that peninsula, to Russia. What has brought this issue to the fore was Ukrainian Defence Minister Fedorov on 27 May formalising what had previously been a covert campaign into a declared strategic programme, announcing a $113 million initiative he called the “Logistical Lockdown.” The programme is designed to massively scale up mid-range drone strikes against Russian supply networks deep behind the front line, with the stated objective of depriving Russian forces of the ability to conduct active assault operations.
This approach is hardly new. In western doctrine it is known as Interdiction. The concept of destroying second and third echelon forces, their logistics and C2, was a key aspect of the Cold War era Air-Land Battle developed by the U.S. military. Then, long-range ground fires (such as MLRS) and air force aircraft were central capabilities. Now, drones – for ISR, strike and battle damage assessment – are the key effector for interdiction, or as it is now known, mid-range strike.
The campaign is targeting the R-280 highway, also known as the M-14 and renamed by Russian occupation authorities as the “Novorossiya” route. This road runs from Rostov-on-Don in Russia, through occupied Mariupol, Berdyansk, and Melitopol, and into Crimea. It is Russia’s primary land line of communication to the peninsula. It has only grown in importance since the Kerch Bridge has been progressively degraded by Ukrainian strikes. As the Centre for European Policy Analysis has noted, Russia has invested around $11.8 billion between 2024 and 2026 on roads, railways, ports, and industrial projects across occupied southern Ukraine because it sought geographical dispersion and redundancy to protect its logistics from Ukrainian interdiction. The current Ukrainian mid-range strike campaign is slowly degrading that concept.
But it is not only logistics routes that are the targets of this campaign. Russian headquarters, training camps, air defence, ammunition and fuel storage and other military infrastructure up to 100 kilometres behind the front line are targets. The strikes this week on Russia’s 3rd Army training ground in occupied Luhansk, and 36th Army training ground in occupied Zaporizhzhia, are examples of the broader scope of this campaign.
A soon-to-be former Russia oil tanker. Source: 412th Nemesis Brigade The Ukrainian instrument that is central to this campaign is a growing family of Ukrainian middle-strike drones. This includes fixed-wing systems designed to bridge the gap between short-range first-person-view strike drones and the deep-strike platforms used to hit targets inside Russia itself. On 26 May, Ukraine’s 412th Nemesis Brigade of the Unmanned Systems Forces disclosed details of a domestically produced drone called the MORRIGAN, which it described as having operated repeatedly in Crimea and against Russian air defence and logistics assets along the Mariupol-to-Crimea corridor. The AI-assisted Hornet drone, reported previously to be capable of autonomous strikes up to 100 miles or more behind the front line, has also been central to the campaign.
The scale of destruction documented by open-source analysts is considerable. , most destroyed during May. The Defence Intelligence of Ukraine reported that its drone operators had established fire control over sections of the highway linking Berdiansk, Melitopol, and Dzhankoi, using RAM-type UAVs (a loitering precision munition) and other domestically produced strike systems to hit fuel tankers, military vehicles, and logistics hubs up to 150 kilometres behind the front.
For an in-depth review of this campaign, see the long thread posted on 30 May by Clement Molin here.
The strategic logic of this campaign is simple. Almost all Russian logistics for the southern front and Crimea are land-based. Russia’s investment in the Azov Ring was intended to provide redundancy, but that network’s very success at concentrating supply flows has created chokepoints. Ukraine, by directing this campaign at the highways themselves, is seeking a form of operational-level interdiction that previous attempts were not able to achieve.
The middle-strike campaign fills an operational gap between tactical defensive and counter-attack operations and the long-range, deep strike activities of the Ukrainian military. By conducting all three forms of operations concurrently, they place increasing pressure on Russian forces, degrade their offensive capabilities, and shape the battlespace for future Ukrainian offensive operations in later 2026 and in 2027.
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