Ukraine’s new tactics and drone tech have allowed it to build rare momentum against Russia, according to analysts, Ukrainian officials, and Western intelligence.
Russia’s invasion has been a brutal, grinding battle with little change to the front lines in recent years.
That may be starting to change.
Ukraine has been slowing Russian advances, striking targets Moscow once treated as safe, and regaining some ground.
New drone types are allowing Ukraine to hit areas Russia once considered safe, including depots, vehicles, air defenses, and supply routes that support Russian troops at the front. The goal is to isolate parts of the battlefield, making it harder for Russia to move troops and supplies where they are needed.
Better planning and new systems mean Ukraine is also getting better at using those weapons strategically rather than simply reacting to Russian assaults, analysts say.
“What we’re currently seeing is a new phase of the war,” Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russian warfare expert at the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, told Business Insider.
A new phase of the war
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine is “gradually taking back occupied territory,” adding that “in May, Russia achieved almost no meaningful results on the battlefield.”
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Ukrainian commanders have said Russia is having its worst year since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, and ISW’s conflict analysts wrote late last month that Ukraine is starting to capture more ground than it’s losing for the first time since 2023.
Analysts said Ukraine is successfully “blunting Russian advances and reversing Russian gains in some sectors of the line.”
Additionally, they said, “Russian battlefield gains are approaching net zero.” Russia’s rate of advance has plummeted since last year, and it is “losing more soldiers to make fewer gains,” they added.
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ISW analysts said Ukraine’s actions were “actively challenging” the grinding nature of the war. The drone-dominated skies have prevented both sides from bringing in heavy machinery or massing infantry near the front. Russia has tried to bring this style of warfare back, but has largely failed.
Ukraine, however, is showing some promise, reintroducing some small-scale armored formations able to move and fight dynamically. Neither side can conduct major maneuvers yet, but Ukraine is “setting conditions potentially to break out,” ISW said.
New drones for new targets
Ukraine’s drones have been playing a critical role in this shift. For much of the war, Ukraine has relied heavily on short-range first-person-view drones to hit troops and equipment near the front, while long-range drones struck oil facilities, airfields, and military targets deep inside Russia.
But now Ukraine has new drones, including the US-made Hornet drone, that can hit targets at medium range, around 20 to 300 kilometers from the front lines.
Hitting these rear area mid-range targets is creating new problems for the Russian military logistically, because it now “takes much more time to deliver armaments to the front lines,” and “from a psychological point of view,” because “the area which they considered to be safe now is a new kill zone,” said Taras Berezovets, head of the military cooperation department of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces.
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Ukraine’s defense ministry said that in recent months, “destruction of enemy logistics, depots, and other targets has increased fourfold.”
“A battlefield runs on logistics,” it said. “Ukraine is making sure Russia’s does not.”
The UK defense ministry observed on Monday that Ukraine’s growing ability to disrupt Russia’s transportation nodes using drones “has likely been one of the enablers for Ukrainian success.”
The battlefield, it added, remains in “context flux,” but Ukraine’s forces have created a “new threat” by hitting Russian logistics, including along the strategic M-14 highway connecting Russian-occupied Crimea with Russia.
Stepanenko said Ukraine’s large long-range drones are a poor fit for these shorter missions. They can be more vulnerable to the dense electronic warfare Russia uses closer to the front, and they are expensive enough that using them to chase lower-value targets like trucks doesn’t make sense. And the shorter-range drones lacked the reach.
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New mid-range drones are creating chaos in Russian rear areas, and Stepanenko suspects the strike campaign “is likely going to get a lot stronger over the coming weeks and months until Russian forces find a countermeasure.”
Ukraine is saying the same.
“Hits at distances of more than 20 kilometers are now twice as high as in March and four times as high as in February. And there will be more,” Zelenskyy said last month. “This is a priority area.”
Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said Ukraine is “launching a ‘logistics lockdown’ for the Russian army,” with more progress to come as the country invests over $110 million into these efforts.
Berezovets said use of this mid-range strike technology in large quantities “will change the front lines.” And Ukraine now has better planning and systems to take advantage of it.
An opportunity for Ukraine
Ukraine has developed improved battlefield awareness and planning capabilities, allowing it to identify more effective targets and make a greater impact on the overall fight. ISW analysts said that its operational planning is “maturing.”
Making the difference are things like Ukraine’s new Delta battlefield management system, which combines intelligence and data from satellites, combat units, drone feeds, and other sources to provide a better overall picture of the fight, both enemy and friendly forces, for targeting and coordination.
Delta, which has received praise and consideration from NATO officials, became mandatory for all units in August. Analysts said it is “enabling better awareness, planning capabilities, and thinking about Russian operational weaknesses.”
Ukrainian forces, ISW wrote, “are taking time to shape the battlefield and set conditions ahead of better-scoped maneuvers.”
Stepanenko said that Ukraine’s military planning has evolved and shifted away from simply reacting to assaults in front of them “to actually thinking long-term” in order “to disrupt Russian ability to bring up troops and equipment closer to the battlefield and therefore disrupt Russian preparations for offensive operations.'”
She said another help is the Ukrainian government’s new awards program, which rewards soldiers for battlefield kills with points they can use to buy equipment like drones. It can reward pursuing important targets that are harder to reach, helping units focus beyond the immediate targets for strategic effect.
Military reforms are also in play. Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute, wrote in Foreign Policy that changes to Ukrainian training structures are making soldiers better prepared and sustaining morale.
Ukraine has momentum, not an overwhelming advantage, and Russia still has a large military, the ability to adapt, and the capacity to keep pressure on the front. The momentum, though, is something Ukrainian forces haven’t had in a long time.
The war has been a constant cat-and-mouse fight, with new tactics and technology often countered by the other side. That means Ukraine’s current opening may not last.
ISW analysts wrote that “Ukraine likely has a unique and time-constrained opportunity to exploit its current initiative while Russian forces remain vulnerable.”
