To apply a morbid paraphrase to Charles Dickens’s 19th-century literary classic “A Tale of Two Cities,” the current and seemingly interminable (having raged since early 2022) Russia-Ukraine War could be very much characterized nowadays as “A War of Two Cities.”
Besides channeling the late great Mr. Dickens, this writer’s choice of phraseology is also inspired by the so-called “war of the cities” phase of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), strategic air raids and missile attacks between those warring nations (then led at the time by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein respectively), aimed at undermining civilian morale and inflicting economic damage.
Russian Air Force Bomber Tu-160. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Tu-160 bomber. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
One could presumably also draw a “war of the cities” analogy with Berlin and London during World War II, though in that particular case it was only one side (Nazi Germany) that was actually lobbing missiles (Britain hadn’t yet developed operational ballistic missiles, thus having to settle for bombing Berlin with heavy bombers such as the Avro Lancaster and Handley Page Halifax).
A key difference between those past wars and the current one is that the missiles used by those 20th-century militaries (V-1 “buzz bomb” cruise missiles and V-2 rockets in the case of Germany; Scud missiles in the case of Iraq) were woefully inaccurate, whilst the drones and missiles being used by Moscow and Kyiv alike are far more accurate and therefore deadlier.
On the One Side: Russian Strikes on Kyiv
One of our sources of information for this side of the grim ledger is a 7 July 2026 report titled “The Geography of Coercion: Russian Missile and Drone Campaigns in Ukraine,” penned by Marcus Welsch, Yasir Atalan, Benjamin Jensen, and Erik Tiersten-Nyman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, DC-based think tank that’s also renowned for its Missile Threat component of its Missile Defense Project.
To wit, “Russia uses firepower strikes as a form of coercion to impose military, economic, and psychological costs on the Ukrainian state and society so that Kyiv and its supporters will accept an outcome more favorable to Moscow—a classic punishment strategy.
To that end, Russia employs massed salvos comprised of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones to hit targets behind the battlefield’s front lines.
These strikes seek to weaken Ukraine’s ability to fight, disrupt the systems that sustain the war, and increase pressure on Ukraine’s political leadership and population.”
On the Flip Side: Ukrainian Strikes on Moscow
That fatal flip side is exemplified in a massive strike wherein more than 430 drones targeted the Moscow region overnight July 6-7, which were in turn part of a 450-strong Ukrainian drone attack spread out across multiple Russian regions, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD; Министерство обороны Российской Федерации). According to the official Russian state news agency TASS (a carryover from the Soviet era), this attack on the capital was the largest in the past two years.
A 7 July 2026 report in Kyiv Post titled “Russia Says Moscow Faces Largest Drone Attack in Two Years,” penned by Kateryna Zakharchenko doesn’t make mention of any casualties (whether civilian or military) stemming from that attack.
Nonetheless, the strikes most certainly did generate serious logistical nightmares for city and national government officials alike, as it spurred temporary airspace restrictions at Sheremetyevo International Airport (ICAO: SVO)—the Russian Federation’s busiest airport—whereupon flights were allowed to operate only after coordination with aviation authorities due to beefed-up security measures in the Russian capital city’s aviation zone.
Russia – Ukraine War: Kosovo Parallels?
To draw an analogy with a war that took place in the closing months of the 20th century (and that therefore many of us here have actually been alive long enough to remember), we can look at Operation Allied Force, i.e., the 1999 NATO air campaign directed against Serbia (Yugoslavia) to stop then-Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the ethnic Albanian populace of Kosovo.
Though unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were used on a significantly smaller scale back then, cruise missiles such as the Tomahawk were wielded aplenty by U.S. forces in that conflict. In addition to targeting fielded Serbian military forces, NATO war planners also heavily targeted the infrastructure in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade.
As noted by Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), “the bombing campaign’s impact on Serb citizens and the government’s inner circle forced Milosevic to negotiate an end to the conflict, resulting in the United States and NATO ceasing the operation on 10 June.” For good measure, it also served as the eventual catalyst for the overthrow of Milosevic, as manifested in the so-called “Bulldozer Revolution” of 5 October 2000.
It remains to be seen if Zelenskyy’s current strategy will have a similar effect on Putin’s grip on power. Stay tuned, dear readers.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (with a concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He is also the author of the book “Five Decades of a Fabulous Firearm: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Beretta 92 Pistol Series,” the second edition of which was recently published.
