Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.
It is especially delicious how Russia’s greatest advantage in this war - their size relative to Ukraine, hence significantly higher manpower and resources than Ukraine, as well as territorial depth that let them have important military facilities beyond the range of Ukraine, has been turned by Ukraine into one of Russia’s worst strategical weaknesses.
Anywhere in Ukraine can be hit by Russia, even with shitty shit drones like Shaheed, so Ukranians adapted, plus comparativelly to Russia their’s is a smaller country hence with fewer sites of strategical value, which means having enough AA to take down most of Russia’s missiles and long-range drones is actually possible, which is why Russia’s ever larger mass attacks of late have had so much less effect than smaller attacks did at the start of the Invasion.
Meanwhile Russia’s strategically important infrastructure is all over a large country, so they would have to deploy AA to defend every individual site and they don’t have enough of the kind of AA that can successfully deal with low-flying drones (it doesn’t matter how good their coverage with longer range systems like the S-500 is when that weapon system is not suitable to deal with Cessna-152s converted into drones flying at low altitude plus each missile costs many times more than each of those drones).
It is especially delicious how Russia’s greatest advantage in this war - their size relative to Ukraine, hence significantly higher manpower and resources than Ukraine, as well as territorial depth that let them have important military facilities beyond the range of Ukraine, has been turned by Ukraine into one of Russia’s worst strategical weaknesses.
Anywhere in Ukraine can be hit by Russia, even with shitty shit drones like Shaheed, so Ukranians adapted, plus comparativelly to Russia their’s is a smaller country hence with fewer sites of strategical value, which means having enough AA to take down most of Russia’s missiles and long-range drones is actually possible, which is why Russia’s ever larger mass attacks of late have had so much less effect than smaller attacks did at the start of the Invasion.
Meanwhile Russia’s strategically important infrastructure is all over a large country, so they would have to deploy AA to defend every individual site and they don’t have enough of the kind of AA that can successfully deal with low-flying drones (it doesn’t matter how good their coverage with longer range systems like the S-500 is when that weapon system is not suitable to deal with Cessna-152s converted into drones flying at low altitude plus each missile costs many times more than each of those drones).
In this, Ukraine’s strategy is masterful, IMHO.