The Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not change the course of war, but inflict noticeable pressure - NYT
According to the New York Times journalists, the drone campaign combines a tactical effect with psychological pressure on the Kremlin and serves as a message to international partners about the determination of Kiev. According to the newspaper, Ukrainian units have learned to send deeper into the Russian territory drones with great distance flight, aimed at the processing capacity of oil.
The idea is not only to break logistics, but also to create economic and political pressure on power in Moscow while the land successes are limited. In the fields far from the front, fighters prepare devices with wingspan up to seven meters and combat loads up to 50 kg; Checks and launches are most common at night.
The commander of the unit, known under the call sign "Casper", directly says that after the night operation, there are reports of fires at the factories in the morning - this is the kind of influence that the team seeks. Since August, support groups have been outlined in the sky almost to the sky in order to hit the critical objects of Russia's processing infrastructure.
The purpose of operations is to harm what sanctions and other international measures have not yet been given: to stop and disrupt production lines that directly affect the availability of gasoline and diesel to the population. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy directly called the fire at the Fastal Refinery, emphasizing that such strikes have an instant effect in the domestic fuel market in Russia.
NYT journalists have received rare access to one of the battalions of long -range drones, but for safety reasons they were not allowed to disclose accurate coordinates, the number of devices or the volume of personnel. Although analysts do not call this campaign "cardinal", they indicate a noticeable household and economic effect. According to Wood Mackenzie estimates, by the last period, Ukraine has failed or damaged equipment equivalent to almost 1.
5 million barrels of processing per day - about 20% of Russian processing capacity. These injuries have already caused gasoline deficiency in a number of regions and have artificially accelerated prices - about 40% from the beginning of the year.
In response, the gas station is introduced sales limits (up to five gallons per car), and in some places the sale of gasoline is temporarily suspended; The Russian media captures the lines at the gas station and reports on the absence of gasoline in the Crimea.
The Russian strategy of strikes on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine - from power plants to lines - was aimed at pressure on civilian life within the country; The Ukrainian answer is trying to avoid the disorderly destruction of civilian infrastructure in Russia and focuses on objects that are directly related to the financing of war and household resources. This qualifying tactics are also used to maintain moral legitimacy in the western capitals and reduce the risk of escalation.
Economist Vladislav Forentsev draws attention to the technical vulnerability of the refinery: due to the presence of flammable substances, even one successful blow can cause prolonged fires, and the restoration of complex technological equipment is complicated through sanction barriers to imports and components from the US and EU. In practice, this means that the repair of refineries can be delayed much longer than the restoration of single military facilities.
At the same time, the Ukrainian weapons program has expanded significantly in recent years: from small shock machines on the battlefield to systems capable of overcoming hundreds of kilometers deep into the enemy's territory. Casper's team itself moved from the use of imported models in 2022 to the use of its own modifications; The current arsenal includes serial samples developed in Ukraine after the start of a full -scale invasion.
The subdivision, which originally consisted of about 40 people and ten cars, has now turned into a regiment - Ukrainian military estimates its potential number within the usual regiment (up to ~ 2000). The problem for scaling remains not so much production capacity as funding: factories and workshops can produce more devices, but need significant investments to speed up production by hundreds or thousands of units.