Key Points and Summary – Ukraine has shifted strategy from the front to Russia’s rear, using long-range drones and missiles to hit refineries, depots, and industry—2,000 km deep in some cases.
-The campaign is generating fuel shortages, airport shutdowns, rolling blackouts, and rising costs that rattle Russian citizens and elites.
President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin during the G20 Japan Summit Friday, June 28, 2019, in Osaka, Japan. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
-Kyiv aims to crack “deathnomics” by attacking the revenues and comforts that sustain the war.
-As defenses stretch to protect refineries and cities, Russia faces shrinking oil income, tax hikes, and a tightening budget.
-With Ukraine scaling domestic strike systems and navigation that beats GPS jamming, the pressure inside Moscow will grow—and the Kremlin can’t ignore it.
Ukraine Is Bringing the War Home to Moscow
The last thing Vladimir Putin expected from his bunker in Moscow in early 2022 was that his army would be ground down fighting for mere inches of territory more than three and a half years into the full-scale invasion. Now, Ukrainian drones buzz across Russia, as Kyiv strikes oil refineries, including one 2,000 kilometers away on Putin’s birthday. For the past two years, Kyiv has increasingly brought the war home to Moscow’s elites.
Ukraine On the March
In the days leading up to May’s Victory Day parade, Ukrainian drones were already buzzing near Moscow. Kyiv said China asked Ukraine not to strike the Kremlin while Xi Jinping was in attendance, likely because it doubted Moscow’s ability to protect him.
For years, both Russian and foreign observers saw Putin as a shrewd, calculating statesman—a leader whose luck and timing always seemed to favor him, until his army met the Ukrainians on the battlefield.
President Donald J. Trump welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska, August 15, 2025 (DoD photo by Benjamin Applebaum)
Putin’s rise to power in the early 2000s coincided with a surge in global gas prices that filled Russia’s coffers. Throughout his presidency, a social contract has existed: Putin could pursue his imperial ambitions, as long as ordinary Russians didn’t suffer too extensively, and as long as the rent-seeking elites could pillage the country’s resources. Putin thought it all too easy after his 2014 invasion of Crimea, when the West was too scared to act.
The 2022 invasion proved a nightmare for the Kremlin. Bogged down in a war of attrition, Russia resorted to “meatgrinder” assaults against Ukrainian defensive positions, and the bodies began piling up. Kyiv realized that killing Russian soldiers en masse would not be enough to stop them.
As long as there was money to be made, Russians would keep fighting. So Ukraine invested heavily in a long-range drone fleet, striking at the oil revenues that fund the Kremlin’s war machine.
Deathnomics
Kyiv understands that increasing pressure on both the Russian public and the elites is key to ending the war. “That is why only pressure can stop this war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised evening speech in early October.
A phenomenon that Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev calls “deathnomics” has created a new artificial middle class in Russia, as for many, the war is a way to earn income they wouldn’t have otherwise received. Mothers and wives sometimes encourage loved ones to sign up rather than fall into unemployment or alcoholism, as death payments and battlefield wages can enrich a family. Over time, many Russians became comfortable with the war’s costs.
Putin, speaking to Russian women who had lost their sons in the war in November 2022, told one mother: “Some people die of vodka, and their lives go unnoticed. But your son really lived and achieved his goal. He didn’t die in vain.”
Yet that uneasy stability is starting to crack. Relentless drone strikes from Ukraine are beginning to reverse that complacency. Attacks on fuel depots and energy infrastructure have produced widespread fuel shortages; a thriving black market for gasoline has emerged in some regions. First, people complained about rising prices, then about empty pumps across Russia.
In late September, stations in Moscow and the surrounding region ran dry of Russia’s most popular 92- and 95-octane gasoline grades, forcing drivers to hunt across multiple stations as prices soared above 100 rubles per liter.
The Russian People are Bracing
Russian media recently reported that older Russians who remember the collapse of the Soviet Union are now stocking up on shelf-stable foods in anticipation of further shortages driven by the fuel shortages.
Cities such as Belgorod have endured rolling blackouts after Ukrainian strikes on energy sites. “They cannot be allowed to feel comfortable. And when they no longer feel comfortable, they will begin to raise questions with their leadership,” Zelensky said.
In Moscow and other regions throughout 2025, airports have repeatedly shut down or delayed flights due to Ukrainian drone attacks. Between January and May, Russian airports were shut down 217 times due to Ukrainian drone attacks – more than in all of 2023 and 2024 combined – disrupting tens of thousands of passengers and costing airlines over 1 billion rubles. On September 22, The Moscow Times reported that more than 200 flights were delayed or canceled in the Russian capital following a mass drone strike.
Kyiv’s long-range drones often rely on Russian mobile networks for navigation and reconnaissance, prompting the Kremlin to impose widespread blackouts across dozens of regions. These outages have tripled since June, costing Russia an estimated $557 million per hour in lost productivity, with a $115 impact in Moscow alone.
Moscow’s military budget is also shrinking for the first time since 2022, dropping from $163 billion to $156 billion amid inflation and sanctions. Putin is raising taxes and cutting spending to keep the war going. Russia’s oil and gas export revenues fell by about 25% in September compared with the same month last year. Speaking on October 19, Zelensky said he expects Russia to face a budget deficit of nearly $100 billion by 2026.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is scaling production of long-range missiles and strike systems designed to further squeeze Russia’s logistics and energy lifelines, which will intensify the economic pain for the Kremlin.
At the same time, Ukraine’s defense firms are rapidly innovating. Denis Shtilerman, chief designer at Fire Point, the company behind the FP-1 drone, responsible for about 60% of deep strikes on Russian territory, and the domestic FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, said it remains “very difficult to reach Moscow” because of its dense air-defense ring and helicopter patrols. Yet Fire Point is developing drones that can navigate without GPS, using a low-altitude night map-matching system to help overcome electronic warfare defenses.
However, the balance is already shifting. In a May interview, Putin said, “We have enough strength to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion.” Buoyed by overconfidence, he dismissed repeated, at times desperate, attempts by Trump to negotiate a peace deal. But throughout 2025, Ukraine was growing stronger technologically. Now it is Zelensky who cautions Russian leaders to “know where the bomb shelters are.”
Following Trump’s last attempt to meet with Putin in Budapest, which was called off after Russia refused to soften its hardline stance on the war, The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington had quietly lifted a key restriction on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied long-range missiles. The White House denied the report. Yet on October 22, Kyiv used Western-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to strike an explosives plant in Bryansk, penetrating Russian air defenses.
If Ukraine continues deep-strikes at factories that support the Kremlin’s war effort, Russia will be forced to stretch its already-thin air defenses even further. That, in turn, would allow larger waves of Ukrainian drones to increase pressure on Moscow and even St. Petersburg, forcing the political and economic elites there to confront the threat of war at home.
And if history is any guide, once the war’s pressure intensifies on the Muscovites, even the Kremlin’s walls cannot stand unshaken.
About the Author: David Kirichenko
David Kirichenko is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His work on warfare has been featured in the Atlantic Council, Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Modern Warfare Institute, among many others. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.
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Krystal cane
October 28, 2025 at 4:39 pm
And just think that fat orange man in the White House is best friends with this guy. Speaking of the White House it looks like crap now since some more I decided to take a bulldozer to it.
Swamplaw Yankee
October 28, 2025 at 5:39 pm
WELL, well. What to say? Has anyone thrown a dessert at Kirchenko at the Henry Jackson staff cafeteria?
This kid pretends he is a Yankee around Maryland. Hetie, for a few bucks, a trip to the inner beltway in person is possible. See, the White House denizens in person (maybe).
OK 2014. The kid pretends that the USA of 2010-14 is just so, so innocent. Yes, I speculate on how pure it was. Maybe he can quickly publish his PHD on the POTUS Obama Cabal collusions with the forces now arrayed against his Ukraine. How about an immediate 10 part op-ed on the Rozell – Sollenberger long-ago revelations of the Obama Cabal in that pre-ballroom White House concealing Executive functions.
Yeah, as the NAZI-like FSB freely visited the White House after their approved revisions to the Visitors Log-in, the collapse of Ukraine in 2014 was not some gravitational force of nature.
Why was it easy for Putin in Ukraine in 2014? How about a huge amount of strategic pre-planning by the PRC CCP. The PRC CCP knew it had a real moron as a catch, a local genius sure to be re-elected for another 4 years of betrayal.
As the Kremlin had beat the PRC into existence, Gouzenko proved that Ruuzzkie networks were implanted into the USA federal structure even in the twenties. So, the Kremlin ruuzzkies played a key role in the coniuratio, 2014 betrayal of the WEST/ NATO by the POTUS Obama Cabal.
No matter that in 1945 Gouzenko spilled the facts in Ottawa, Yankee morons were elected to POTUS and the flow of billions in extortion goods flowed to the Kremlin ruuzzkies as late as after Stalin’s death. Truman himself, his WH, spent huge tax dollars fighting to prevent any flow of data to his Senator McCarthy ( that is the general US citizenry) + not if the data that McCarthy had disclosed to the US voters was revealing Stalin’s minions inside the US government agencies. WH: Send the billions to Stalin after war end and ask no questions.
So, by 2010 lots of residual net works existed inside the USA. The PRC needed that benefit. The POTUS Obama was open to fundamental marxist fantasies. The betrayal of Ukraine, the WEST, NATO, such concepts did not frighten the POTUS.
The PRC CCP was seen ready to enter into a war with the WEST. The question was strategy. There, the data is large and, often, not precipitated.
Yes, This op-ed is wrong. The 2014 costly chemical mixture prepared for Ukraine was ignited by the art of disguised unilateralism his White House was so adept at.
Questions arise? What intelligence organizations warned what states, with what and when? Who is doing Doctorate work on that? Did Israel not have a clue that the penetration into the WH was extensive? Did the IDF keep this vital data from the politicians as the whole geopolitics of the middle east was recast by this betrayal of the WEST. Funding for HAMAS of today was determined by the PRC CCP need to control the cheap water access to Israel thru the Sea of Azov. Goods flow from China to muslim terrorists cheaply in 2025 thanks to the 2010-14 directions given to POTUS Obama’s Cabal.
To this day: zero boni fide historians have any proof that the POTUS Obama Cabal shared in any way with any state it’s monstrous intention to betray NATO, the WEST in “secret” networking or whatever.
Strangely, every alphabet agency inside the USA is 100% mum on these mystery days inside “Benedict Arnold” betrayal Centre. With the Trump data, hey, lets call a MSM rep asap.
Ad rem: with this one classic fabrication -myth- error, the op-ed cognitively crumbles into smaller components parts. What ever the writer hears in 2025 on the front Genocide meat grinder lines, one speculates that little will relate to the inner beltway.
Peer readers have a role, I claim, in the very, very restricted op-ed world. Many op-ed writers reduce into what say you, a ruuzz-shill, woefully ignorant of the USA, Ukraine and what the two democracies spiritually share in their well spring of creation.
Yeah, little facts will have their place, somewhere. This young Yankee needs to declare if he still believes that the 2010-2014 POTUS Obama Democrat Cabal had zero intention or policy to support Ukraine, the WEST, in what form and with what sources, proof. Or, are we all misinformed about this open and accountable chap: are we here? -30-
Swamplaw Yankee
October 30, 2025 at 12:43 pm
As ruuzzz-shills clearly state: they vividly smell the decay in the WEST with great bursts of op-ed to press their understanding of the periodicity of the rapid decomposition of the WEST.
Ad rem: Is the above op-ed author a danger to the “Concept ” of Ukraine. As this east coast Yankee wanders about Ukraine, what infectious strains of “ignorance” does he inculcate into the responses to Ukrainian minds who have just met their first “Yankee”.
In his op-ed it is clear the Yankee op-ed just has zero idea of that “LONG GAME” that enveloped Ukraine up to 2015. In particular, the US federal government role in the process. Did Putin find it “easy” to invade Ukraine? Or, did the well financed, pre-planning to outwit, outplay the ongoing Cold War NATO containment of the “Axis of Evil” find a facile and facilitative “Benedict Arnold” POTUS Obama tutored by the PRC CCP Xi regime strategists.
The analogy: As Truman energetically funnelled billions in usa tax dollars to Stalin after May 10, 45, the complete USA voter base wallowed in Ignorance. Zero MSM could even conceive of the ongoing atomic bomb secrets betrayal that FDR allowed. Why was Truman so motivated to stop Senator McCarthy revealing the ruuzz-spy networks while Truman still allowed sending USA secrets to Stalin? Notice how Hollywood ‘still’ avoids this top world history thriller.
Or, do we believe, prima facie, the ruuzz-shills agit-prop!
Until the inner working of every US agency in the Obama regime is 100% open for review, the Ukrainian awash in the Diaspora must be 100% aware that vulnerable Ukrainian children are not brainwashed by idiot pseudo-historians flashing Potemkin Village images, even if they are able to speak Ukrainian. -30-
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