On May 16 and 17, 2026, kyiv launched one of its most massive attacks on Russia. More than 600 drones fell on the capital, Moscow, but also on areas more than 1,700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian strikes in Russia are becoming more and more numerous and effective, and this could be a turning point.
Located within 2,000 kilometers of theUkrainethe Russian cities of Yekaterinburg, Perm, Cheboksary were affected: arms factories, refineries, airfields attacked in this region of the Urals Russianwhich until then thought itself safe from the war. Long-distance drone strikes which, for the Ukrainian forces, represented some challenges.
Vincent Tourret, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), explains: “The first challenge is simply the number of drones in production to reach these distances. This means increasing the payload on each drone. Succeed in having devices that are capable of evolving despite Russian electronic interference. And then finally, the problem is to weaken Moscow’s anti-air and anti-missile defense enough to pass more and more. The Ukrainians, over more than a year, made this industrial, technological and operational effort, where little by little, they nibbled away at the batteries and radars located in Ukraine, then in neighboring regions like Belgorod or Crimea, and began to widen the holes in the racket of the Russian defense. »
Bringing war into the daily lives of Russians
These deep strikes reveal gaping flaws in the security system. Russian protection and in fact causes strategic upheavals. Vincent Tourret continues: “The most visible level, the strategic one, is to bring the war into the everyday lives of Russians. This is one of the stated goals of the Ukrainian strategy. But here, what is the most interesting and the most important is that until now, we had a Ukrainian struggle with the drones which were in the infinitely small, with the FPV, the drones on the front line, and the infinitely large, therefore the strikes on Russian cities and refineries. What is now changing is the medium range interdiction – between 50 and 100 kilometers – where the Ukrainians now have effective drones to strike munitions centers, their logistics, concentration zones, bases, garrisons. And therefore, there is a real risk for the Russians that the Ukrainians will finally succeed in suffocating their efforts and stabilizing the front, or even regaining the initiative.. »
Un été 2026 possiblement décisif
If for the moment, no change has been observed on the Russian side, the summer is conducive to offensives and will serve as a test for everyone’s theory of victory, underlines Vincent Tourret: “The Russians have stuck to the idea that they can wear down Ukrainian forces by pressurizing them until they break. The Ukrainian theory, conversely, is to say that they can put a strong enough stop, destroy enough points of Russian offensives so that there is stagnation, even stabilization of the front. And to achieve this, they excessively robotize the front. Indeed, this summer these two theories will be repeated at high power. »
After more than four years of war, the summer of 2026 could therefore be decisive, with the result of a possible exhaustion of the forces present.
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