Ukrayna’nın insansız hava araçlarıyla uzun menzilli vuruşları savaşın seyrini değiştiriyor

For years, Ukrainian strikes stalled within a few kilometers of the front. Meduza mapped thousands of geolocated attacks and found they now reach far behind Russian lines.

The war in Ukraine is entering a new phase: while the Russian military’s offensive is bogged down at the front, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have pulled ahead in the drone race. Meduza has already written about how this Ukrainian success led to a fuel collapse in Crimea, how drones broke through Moscow’s layered air defenses, and how strikes on oil refineries have plunged entire regions into a gasoline crisis. These were all scattered episodes. The main Ukrainian operation of the past month and a half is best described as a campaign of long-range attacks on Russia’s operational rear — the belt of territory that begins a few dozen kilometers (roughly 15 to 30 miles) from the front and lies mostly within annexed lands. For the Russian army, it has turned into an extremely dangerous zone. How much more often are drones hitting this zone now, and how much farther do they reach? And where is it most hazardous for the Russian military? To answer these questions, we studied thousands of geolocated Ukrainian strikes.