Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure and major supply routes are making things very difficult for Putin’s ‘special military operation’, especially in Crimea.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin was forced to mount a much-subdued Victory Day Parade in Moscow on 9 May 2026 with no armoured vehicles amid the threat from Ukrainian attack drones – a parade that ultimately went ahead following the imposition of a three-day ceasefire and prisoner exchange brokered by the United States – it was clear to any Russian that Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine was not going well.
Fast forward several weeks and the situation on the ground in Ukraine – and indeed Russia – has only gotten worse. In mid-June 2026 it was widely reported that Russia had started to import gasoline from India as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian oil refineries, pipelines and fuel storage facilities: a tactic that is believed to have cut Russia’s domestic gasoline production by 25%. This is an astonishing turnaround for Russia, which has previously been one of the world’s largest exporters of oil and refined products.
Meanwhile, relentless Ukrainian targeting of both Russian oil facilities and Russia’s main supply routes to the front lines in Ukraine – most notably in relation to the Crimean Peninsula, where supply columns are being decimated by Ukrainian FPV drones – are starting to significantly affect both Russian military operations and everyday Russian life in general.
Such has been the recent intensity of Ukrainian drone strikes on the fuel depots, power substations and logistical arteries into Crimea that on 26 June the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, and Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev announced a state of emergency there. Open fuel sales to individuals and private businesses in Crimea have been suspended, with fuel entirely reserved for government-run services and military forces.
The effects of Ukraine’s focused attacks moreover, are now being felt much more widely, with Reuters reporting on 29 June, for example, “Motorists in nearly all of Russia are limited in the amount of fuel they can now buy, with particularly severe restrictions imposed in all of Russian-occupied Ukraine, much of southern Russia and Siberia. Only Moscow and a handful of mainly remote regions have no formal restrictions, although even in the capital some filling stations are shut and others have long queues.”
When Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 with the sudden appearance of his ‘little green men’ on the peninsula, it became the jewel in the crown of his belligerent foreign policy. Not only has the Crimean port of Sevastopol historically the home of the Soviet/Russian Black Sea Fleet (although it has now largely vacated the port in the face of repeated Ukrainian attacks), but the ancient site of Chersonesos near Sevastopol is regarded as the symbolic birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. Moreover, Crimea was, in fact, a part of Russia until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukrainian control for reasons of administrative convenience.
For all of these reasons – but perhaps most obviously because it was the one ‘land grab’ of Putin’s that did go well: an outcome that no doubt emboldened the Russian leader’s territorial avarice – Crimea is especially important to Putin.
Now, however, the peninsula is very much under siege. After initially focusing on Russian air defence assets in the region, Ukrainian attacks then focused on the two main road arteries into Crimea – the E105 highway that enters the peninsula heading south-southwest via the Chonhar crossing and the E97 highway that enters northwestern Crimea at Armiansk and eastern Crimea via the Kerch Bridge – as well as Crimean energy infrastructure such as power stations and storage facilities for oil and gas. Additionally, on 23 June Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) posted on the Threads media channel that the railway bridge over the North Crimean Canal near Rozdolne in northwest Crimea “no longer exists”.
How things will progress in Crimea remains to be seen. To maintain his appearance of power and control Putin can ill afford to risk losing the peninsula, and the Ukrainian leadership may well have calculated that the threat of its loss might bring Putin closer to the negotiating table. Yet Putin will also know that the Ukrainian armed forces can ill afford the manpower that would be required to assault and retake Crimea.
Meanwhile, however, Russian forces in occupied Ukraine and Russia itself are being stretched by the Ukrainian strategy in both manpower terms and with regard to air defences. Driven by Ukrainian forces’ effective use of FPV drones in the immediate battlefield area in Ukraine, Russian losses are coming to the point where a continued offensive stance cannot be maintained. According to claims by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, Russian personnel losses in Ukraine (those killed and lost through injury) have totalled around 1,402,200 from 24 February 2022 up to 29 June 2026. Since late 2025 there have been consistent reports of Russia is losing more troops in Ukraine than it can recruit to replace them. On 5 May 2026, for example, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement on the Telegram social media channel that April was the fifth consecutive month that Russia’s battlefield losses exceeded its ability to mobilise new forces.
While Putin has the option of ordering a politically risky heightened mobilisation drive, it appears in recent weeks that he is increasingly opting for a mobilisation by stealth by implementing a more aggressive campaign to have more Russian men of fighting age press-ganged off the streets.
The financial cost of the war in Russia is also coming home to roost, which has led the Russian state to increasingly look at shaking down the country’s oligarchs and rich business owners and forcefully seizing money from private bank accounts. Rich Russians are now on notice that Putin’s regime is coming for their money.
Regarding Russia’s air defences, Ukraine’s ability to strike beyond the immediate battlefront is stretching Russian assets to the limit, given the vast geographic area those systems now have to cover. While satellite images have revealed the construction of a new ring air defence positions around Moscow, Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries as far as 700 km from the Ukrainian border are forcing Russia to choose between protecting its energy infrastructure and its deployed forces.
Ukraine’s capacity to strike deeper into Russia are being increasingly facilitated by the development of its own indigenously developed systems, meaning that Ukraine is no longer reliant on deep-strike systems supplied by NATO Europe and the United States, where the Trump Administration has proved unreliable as an ally against the Russian invasion. Kyiv-based company Fire Point, for example, has developed a number of one-way effectors that started with the FP-1 propeller-driven one-way attack drone, which has a 1,600 km range when carrying a 50 kg warhead. After Fire Point developed the 200 km-range FP-2 drone as a mid-range alternative to the FP-1, the company then developed the turbofan-powered FP-5 Flamingo ground-launched cruise missile. This system, which is around 14 m long and has a range of up to 3,000 km carrying a 1,150 kg warhead, entered service in May 2025. According to reporting by the Kyiv Post, Fire Point executives claimed in late 2025 that serial production of FP-5s would reach about 30 missiles a month, rising to at least 200 per month by the end of 2026, although Russian strikes against a Fire Point production facility may have set this back to some degree.
While the Flamingo lacks the survivability of more advanced cruise missile designs, the thin spread of Russian air defence systems means that FP-5s always have a chance of reaching their targets.
Ukraine’s future deep strike capabilities are also being supported by initiatives such as the UK’s Project Brakestop, which seeks to provide low-cost, long-range strike weapons a range of at least 500 km with a warhead of at least 225 kg, a speed of more than 600 km/h and a target unit cost of around GBP 400,000 (EUR 464,270), excluding the warhead.
