Increased Strikes on Russian Targets: Atlantic Council Names Ukraine's Strategic Goals
Date: 2025-01-29 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: WAR
By recently stepping up airstrikes on targets inside Russia, Ukraine is disrupting the enemy's logistics, reducing its defense production, and demonstrating its growing ability to strike back. At the same time, the lack of a decisive response from Moscow is encouraging Ukraine's Western allies to overcome their fear of escalation, writes David Kirichenko, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, on the pages of the Atlantic Council.
The analyst emphasized Ukraine's "growing ability" to carry out airstrikes over long distances "thanks to the rapid development of domestic drone and missile production since 2022."
"By reversing Putin's invasion of Russia, Kyiv aims to disrupt Moscow's battlefield operations, expose Russia's vulnerabilities, and establish the kind of deterrence that could eventually lay the foundation for a lasting peace," the publication says.
Meanwhile, the expert notes, "Russia remains silent," and its officials "usually attribute any evidence of successful strikes to the "wreckage" of Ukrainian drones shot down by Russian air defenses."
However, the author sees more and more signs that Ukrainian attacks are causing significant damage to the enemy. In particular, on January 28, information appeared that the work of the Russian Ryazan oil refinery was suspended after a series of drone attacks.
Kirichenko notes that Ukrainian bombings of Russian facilities became possible thanks to "progress in the development of the country's drone fleet." Also, he notes, Ukraine uses a missile arsenal "that is constantly growing":
"Since 2022, the Ukrainian authorities have revived the domestic missile industry after decades of stagnation... This has led to the development of many new models, including the Palyanitsa, Peklo, Ruta, Neptun and Sapsan missiles.
However, Kirichenko noted that "scaling production remains a serious problem that requires significant investment, foreign partnerships and secure production sites." And even despite the support of Kyiv's missile program by some allies, progress is unlikely to be quick, the expert believes.
He named several strategic goals that Ukrainian bombing of enemy targets has. First, it, according to him, "disrupts the logistics of the Russian invasion and increases the cumulative burden on supply chains, while reducing the output of Putin's defense industry."
Second, attacks on energy infrastructure "are intended to weaken the central pillar of the Russian military economy, limiting the Kremlin's ability to earn vital revenue from energy exports."
Third, airstrikes inside Russia affect "the shaping of perceptions of the war." For the Ukrainian public and international audiences, they "provide compelling evidence of Ukraine's growing ability to strike back at Russia, despite the Kremlin's overwhelming advantage in both manpower and firepower."
He also writes about how these attacks affect Russians. In his opinion, "the increase in Ukrainian drone and missile strikes is alarming Russia and directly undermines the Kremlin's painstaking efforts to protect ordinary Russians from the effects of the invasion":
"Like Ukraine's ongoing incursion into Russia's Kursk region, the attacks confirm that the war cannot be contained within Ukraine and will increasingly spill over into Russia itself."
In his view, "in the long term, officials in Kyiv hope that Ukraine's proven ability to strike targets deep inside Russia could strengthen the country's hand in potential negotiations and serve as a powerful deterrent against future Russian aggression."
