Ukraine’s New Air-Power Paradigm

Putin says Russia is bound to win a war of attrition. Recent developments cast doubt on his confidence.

By Jillian Kay Melchior

The Wall Street Journal

June 24, 2026 11:25/ am ET

Soldiers from the Khartiia Corps work with midrange drones. Ukraine's Khartiia Corps

Vladimir Putin has been making the case that Russia’s battlefield advances are unstoppable and the outnumbered Ukrainians can’t win a war of attrition. It follows that Kyiv should settle before things get worse, even if it means surrendering the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukraine’s latest moves, however, call this whole argument into question.

“We are scaling middle-strike operations to systematically destroy enemy logistics and supply lines,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on May 27, calling it “a ‘logistics lockdown’ for the Russian army.”

Senior Ukrainian military and political leaders began discussing a large-scale midrange strike campaign following the failed 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. Former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk consulted with Western advisers to develop an operating concept that circulated as a strategy document among senior government and military leaders. The details of this document, described here for the first time, offer insight into what Ukraine now seeks to accomplish.

Ubiquitous short-range drones have created a deadlock at the front. The West would use air power to cover its own troops and attack the enemy there, but Ukraine’s air force is more limited. Making a virtue of necessity, Mr. Zagorodnyuk’s operating concept describes a “new paradigm for air power” whereby Ukraine can achieve “the same effects” using “less sophisticated” means that are “much cheaper” but “equally effective.”

 

Midrange attack drones are the quintessential weapon of this new paradigm. A key goal is to “collapse the Russian military from behind,” says Phillips OBrien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and one of the Western experts who worked with Mr. Zagorodnyuk. Western military doctrine calls this “air interdiction.” It involves destroying, disrupting, diverting and delaying the supporting functions that prop up the enemy’s front line. Ukraine’s drones target Russian command posts, communication lines, ammunition and fuel storage, drone-control centers, logistics, and reserve forces.

Mr. Fedorov has said Ukraine “quadrupled” its interdiction strikes in recent months. In May alone, Ukraine hit 414 enemy headquarters, command posts and other important rear objects, said the top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Ukraine is also ramping up long-range strikes on military and energy targets deep inside Russia. These mid- and long-range attacks are forcing the Kremlin to make tough choices about how to allocate air defenses—and what to leave exposed. At the front, the Ukrainians now have more short-range drones than the Russians. Together this is “achieving an operational effect we haven’t seen before at this scale,” says Kateryna Stepanenko of the Institute for the Study of War. [JB: ISW]

During a sustained interdiction campaign, “terrain-holding will become increasingly untenable for Russian ground forces who will be under-resourced from the rear and increasingly subject to attrition from the front,” the operating concept document predicted.

For the first time since 2023 Ukraine has started to liberate more ground than it’s losing, ISW said in May. Meanwhile Russia struggles with attrition: Finnish President Alexander Stubb told the Swiss newspaper NZZ this month there are now eight Russian casualties for every Ukrainian killed or wounded, up from three in December. Russia has suffered some 35,000 casualties a month in 2026 while recruiting only some 27,000 men, Mr. Stubb said. 

Ukraine hopes to liberate all occupied territory including Crimea, but one interim goal may be to force Russia to demilitarize the peninsula, which it uses to stage aerial attacks, train forces and supply the front. Crimea “relies on a few vulnerable supply lines,” the operating-concept document noted. Ukraine has recently struck highways, railways and bridges on which Russia relies to sustain logistics to Crimea, as well as energy and transportation infrastructure and air defenses around the Kerch Strait.

Ukraine’s sustained attacks against Mr. Putin’s Black Sea fleet have already forced Russia to withdraw much of its navy from Crimea, and strikes on other Russian positions and assets could pressure Moscow to pull back even more. Keep this up and “from an asset, Crimea turns into a liability” for Russia, Mr. Zagorodnyuk tells me.

In the 2022 counteroffensive Ukraine used High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or Himars, to strike the Russian rear, contributing to the collapse of Russian positions in Kherson and Kharkiv. But Ukraine has since run short on rockets for Himars, and Russians have gotten better at jamming and intercepting them. Ukraine also engaged in some drone-based air interdiction during its Kursk offensive. Mr. Zagorodnyuk is careful to note he was one among several military thinkers who have pushed for a broader air interdiction campaign, and I’ve long heard about ISW’s efforts to promote the same idea.

Several factors explain why it took Ukraine this long to do interdiction at scale. For starters, Kyiv had limited money for weapons and competing urgent needs, including drones for the front and air defenses. Europe has eased some initial restrictions that prevented Ukraine from using financial support to fund its military. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and the General Staff have allocated more than $111 million for middle-strike procurement. Domestic manufacturers are now churning out firepower for the 15- to 125-mile range. Ukrainians are also improving their drones’ ability to withstand Russian electronic warfare.

In the summer and fall of 2025, an elite Russian drone unit known as Rubikon began conducting its own air interdiction campaign, targeting the Ukrainian rear. Rubikon was unique within the Russian military, but the Kremlin has struggled to scale up its operations. Still its successes were a wake-up call for Kyiv that interdiction needed to become a priority, several sources told me.

Ukraine got a prime opening in February, when SpaceX limited Russia’s access to Starlink, disrupting military communications. Additionally, Ukrainian soldiers are now experienced enough to carry out complicated combined-arms operations, a vital skill for midrange strikes.

“My goal, or the goal of our regiment, is to control the depth,” says Volodymyr Mirchuk, commander of the unmanned systems regiment Lava of the Khartiia Corps. “It’s a big operation.” It unfolds over several hours and involves many different kinds of drone pilots and surveillance and attack drones. Mr. Mirchuk says he watches these complex attacks unfold “like a football match” from screens in the command post. Each successful mission further isolates Russians at the front. “I’m enjoying it,” he says.

ISW says Ukraine now has the advantage and the initiative over Russia for midrange strike capability. This increases costs and risks for the Kremlin while weakening Russia’s negotiating position.

 

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Ms. Melchior is a London-based member of the Journal editorial board.

Jillian Kay Melchior is a London-based Editorial Board Member of The Wall Street Journal. She has covered the war in Ukraine, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and other international news. She is a native of Cheyenne, Wyo., and a graduate of Hillsdale College.