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For some time now it has seemed that the frontlines in the war between Russia and Ukraine have been stuck where they are. Neither side is making much progress in either taking or re-taking land. Such thinking invites a mentality that, if the war is stuck where it is, better to sue for some kind of peace, any kind of peace, than to continue the fighting. But keen observers of the war are noticing that the frontlines have not actually frozen; they have shifted significantly, right into the heart of Russia itself.
Where Ukraine has excelled has not only been in heroism and sheer tenacity, but also in ingenuity and innovation. The results of this are now being seen across Russia, as far as the Ural Mountains. A key to the recent most explosive events in this war has been Ukraine’s domestic development of drones and other long-range fire technologies.
Ukraine has developed a strategy to end this war on its own terms. That strategy depends on collapsing the Russian economy. With no income, and the state’s Sovereign Wealth Fund being depleted and bullion being sold off, Russia will no longer be able to finance the continuation of the war they started.
The Russian plan to dominate Ukraine failed a long time ago, and the Russian military has suffered a series of defeats and setbacks that should have persuaded them to quit.
But Putin cannot quit – even after having lost over 1.3 million troops, either dead or maimed. His ability to hold on to power requires his population to believe that they are sacrificing something (from quality of life, access to indoor sanitation, freedoms in general) for a greater good, for the motherland.
But now Ukraine has taken the war to Russia in ways both unexpected and spectacular, many Russians will be questioning the Faustian bargain they have made.
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Ukraine’s Strategic Onslaught
Early on in the war, Ukraine made a series of key decisions to invest in drone technologies. We are now seeing the dividends of that strategy, and the result is the absolute destruction of Russian oil refineries, storage facilities, export infrastructure, and key pipeline intersections. The timing for this, as oil markets are already rocked by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, is not ideal for some, but ending this war cannot come soon enough for the long-suffering people of Ukraine.
Two most recent examples of the effectiveness of Ukraine’s onslaught against such facilities can be seen in the Russian cities of Tuapse and Perm. The first is located some 400 kilometres from Ukrainian territory, and the second is located 1,500 kilometres from Ukraine’s borders. The ability for Ukraine to strike at targets at a 400 km distance is not new, but the absolute destruction of the Tuapse facility and the significance that carries is unprecedented in scale.
The port of Tuapse is responsible for exporting about 10% of all petroleum-based products produced in Russia, about 12 million tons per year. This facility has been struck several times in the last month. The first wave of drone strikes hit the facility on 16 April, and the resulting fires were only extinguished 3 days later, so Ukraine hit it again on 20 April.
A follow-up strike on 28 April demonstrated the accuracy of Ukraine’s weapons systems, as it struck a part of the facility that had been untouched by the earlier two waves. To make sure the job is done, Ukraine hit Tuapse again on 1 May.
What is also very notable about this campaign is that it is highlighting Russia’s lack of air defence capabilities. This could be due to a combination of factors, but as Putin’s billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea reportedly has 21 air defence systems protecting it, naturally, other sites have less coverage.
Also notable, particularly to the Russian population, is that they are told the lack of access to the internet they have to endure is to protect them from such strikes, but they aren’t protected at all. And black oil-laden rain is falling across Tuapse to add to the apocalyptic scene and hammer that message home to them.
Tuapse is (was) not even the largest of Russia’s Black Sea export terminals. It was the next in line. In early April, Ukraine took out the terminal located at Novorossisk, which handled as much as 14% of Russian exports. In this series of attacks 6 of the 7 loading jetties were obliterated, rendering all operations from the terminal impossible.
Combined, almost 25% of Russian petroleum-based product exports passed through these facilities in Tuapse and Novorossisk. That is probably a more significant blow to the income Russia needs to support their war machine than Western sanctions have managed.
There are upstream implications, too. The wells from which Russia is extracting the raw product that would normally flow out through those terminals run at a steady production rate; the taps can’t just be turned off or on, or even regulated very much. In order to keep a well active, it must work at an optimum level, with nowhere for that raw product to go, the oil fields will face very significant problems very soon. If they are not already.
Ukraine was not, and is not, done here. More audacious attacks have followed, on 28, 29 and 30 April, this time at a distance of 1,500 kilometres from Ukraine’s borders, where waves of drones have attacked a key processing and distribution artery located next to the city of Perm, close to the Urals.
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Once again, while the Russian population is told that they have to live without internet access to keep them safe, wave after wave of Ukrainian drones flew through 1,500 km of Russian airspace seemingly without challenge. (As a side note here, in a recent telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, the Russian leader asked his counterpart to secure for him a temporary truce so that Moscow would be allowed to hold their 9 May parade on Red Sq