Serhii, a 46-year-old Ukrainian army officer who ran a furniture store in civilian life, has survived four years of war against Russia. These days, he commands a battalion of 300 troops in Ukraine\u2019s front-line city of Sloviansk. After two combat injuries and the loss of many friends, his take on the war is anchored in harsh experience.<\/p>\n
So it is all the more striking to hear his assessment of where things stand. \u201cWe\u2019ve reached a turning point,\u201d he told me during my visit to Sloviansk in late June. The Ukrainians, he said, are striking devastating blows against Russia\u2019s energy infrastructure, vital logistics, and the factories that produce critical components for its high-tech weaponry. He particularly applauded Kyiv\u2019s campaign to sever the supply lines that provide Russian forces in occupied Crimea with ammunition, fuel, and food.\u00a0So how long will it take to cut off the peninsula entirely? \u201cI think we can do it by the end of the summer,\u201d he answered, noting that this would be a huge humiliation for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cited Russia\u2019s 2014 seizure of the Ukrainian peninsula as one of his lasting achievements.<\/p>\n
Serhii, a 46-year-old Ukrainian army officer who ran a furniture store in civilian life<\/span>, has survived four years of war against Russia. These days, he commands a battalion of 300 troops in Ukraine\u2019s front-line city of Sloviansk. After two combat injuries and the loss of many friends, his take on the war is anchored in harsh experience.<\/p>\n So it is all the more striking to hear his assessment of where things stand. \u201cWe\u2019ve reached a turning point,\u201d he told me during my visit to Sloviansk in late June<\/span>. The Ukrainians, he said, are striking devastating blows against Russia\u2019s energy infrastructure<\/span>, vital logistics, and the factories that produce critical components for its high-tech weaponry. He particularly applauded Kyiv\u2019s campaign to sever the supply lines<\/span> that provide Russian forces in occupied Crimea with ammunition, fuel, and food.\u00a0So how long will it take to cut off the peninsula entirely? \u201cI think we can do it by the end of the summer,\u201d he answered, noting that this would be a huge humiliation for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cited Russia\u2019s 2014 seizure of the Ukrainian peninsula as one of his lasting achievements.<\/p>\n One year ago, it would have been hard to classify Serhii\u2019s view of the war as anything other than wishful thinking. Back then, despite a few remarkable successes, Kyiv\u2019s overall war effort seemed scattershot and unfocused. Yet over the past few months, the world has witnessed a dramatic transformation in Kyiv\u2019s ability to take the fight to the Russians.<\/p>\n One development stands out: For the first time since Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine\u2019s military leaders have worked out a coherent strategy for victory\u2014a plan designed to play to Kyiv\u2019s strengths and exploit Russian weaknesses.\u00a0Mykhailo Gonchar, the president of the Strategy XXI Center for Global Studies in Kyiv, told me that the Ukrainian leadership now believes<\/a><\/span> that it can \u201ccut off a significant share of the revenues financing the [Russian] war budget, trigger a fuel crisis, and surgically sever the critical links in the defense-industrial supply chain, thereby reducing\u2014or even preventing\u2014the production of precision-guided weapons.\u201d The ultimate goal of this and other elements of the new strategy: to stymie Moscow\u2019s ability to continue the war while keeping Ukrainian casualties to a minimum.<\/p>\n The underlying vision is not entirely new. In a paper published last year, former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk provided a detailed outline<\/a><\/span> for what he called \u201cstrategic neutralization\u201d of Russia\u2019s military capacities. As an illustration, he pointed to Ukraine\u2019s stunning success<\/a><\/span> at chasing Russia\u2019s vaunted Black Sea Fleet out of its home port in the Crimean city of Sevastopol and essentially eliminating it as a threat<\/span>. Ukraine did this without a traditional surface fleet of its own, relying instead on the use of naval drones to destroy enemy ships.<\/p>\n What former British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey described<\/a><\/span> as the \u201cfunctional defeat\u201d of the Russian fleet\u2014in other words, not its total destruction but its reduction to impotence\u2014now serves as a model for what Ukraine hopes to achieve in other domains. Rather than trying to grind down Russian forces at the cost of huge losses (an approach exemplified by the disastrous summer counteroffensive of 2023), the Ukrainians plan to render Russian forces in Crimea ineffective by degrading their sources of supply.<\/p>\n Similarly, the long-range drone and missile campaign against oil refineries, fuel storage facilities, and pipelines, striking ever deeper in the Russian interior, aspires to choke off Putin\u2019s ability to wage war at the source. According to the Financial Times<\/em>, Ukraine has hit Russian oil refineries<\/a><\/span> 194 times since the start of this year, 11 times as often as during the same period in 2025. More than half of Russia\u2019s regions have announced<\/a><\/span> fuel shortages, rationing, or restrictions on sales to civilians.<\/p>\n The situation has become so dire that Moscow is now importing gasoline from India\u2014rather embarrassing for a country that is the world\u2019s third-largest producer of crude oil and a major exporter of refined fuels. To cope with the shortages, Russia has banned exports of <\/span>gasoline, jet fuel, and\u2014as of yesterday<\/a>\u2014diesel<\/span>, all of which <\/span>normally generate significant state revenue and foreign currency. Fiscal and economic problems are growing apace<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Kyiv\u2019s new strategy builds on the emergence of new capabilities\u2014and the leadership of 35-year-old Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a tech industry veteran who is credited with ushering in a more rigorous, data-driven approach to warfighting. The effort to isolate Crimea has benefited enormously from the deployment of the Hornet one-way attack drone<\/a><\/span>, a midrange system\u2014developed in collaboration with a U.S. start-up bankrolled by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt\u2014that relies heavily on artificial intelligence to help it evade jamming and zero in on its targets. The Flamingo cruise missile<\/span>, another relatively new arrival on the battlefield, boasts a range of 1,800 miles, substantially boosting Ukraine\u2019s ability to stage strikes on targets far inside Russia. (This week, it was likely several Flamingos that <\/span>significantly damaged<\/a><\/span> Russia\u2019s largest oil refinery in Omsk, more than 1,500 miles from the front line in Ukraine.) The Ukrainians also seem close to fielding their own ballistic missiles, which would greatly increase the explosive power of the warheads that they can launch at Russian strategic sites.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Ukrainian engineers are working on new drone designs that could radically transform the front line by expanding the \u201ckill zone,\u201d the area in which it\u2019s virtually impossible for infantry to move without being targeted. Alina Frolova, the deputy chair of the Kyiv-based Center for Defense Strategies, explained that military planners are trying to extend the zone from a range of 20 miles to 25 miles to more than 40 miles\u2014at which point, Frolova said, it becomes nearly impossible to sustain infantry operations.<\/p>\n This ever-expanding arsenal is giving Ukrainian planners a growing range of options\u2014and creating countless headaches for the Russians, who find themselves forced to make difficult choices about the allocation of their ever-scarcer air defense assets and other diminishing resources. Every anti-aircraft battery that Putin shifts to the protection of Moscow and St. Petersburg is one less that can be deployed to protect energy facilities and defense manufacturing sites elsewhere, not to mention the front line and occupied territories in Ukraine.<\/p>\n No one in Kyiv envisions an all-out invasion and occupation of Russia. So, what would victory actually look like? The answer remains somewhat hazy. Ukraine has already shown how shattering enemy logistics can lead to dramatic battlefield results. In 2022, Russia was forced to pull its forces out<\/a><\/span> of the city of Kherson after Ukrainian attacks with U.S. HIMARS rocket systems severed supply lines. In late June, Russian troops on the Kinburn Spit, a peninsula extending far into the Black Sea, withdrew<\/a><\/span> after Ukraine destroyed their links to sources of supply.<\/p>\n Zagorodnyuk\u2019s report envisions an end state in which Russia\u2019s capacity to wage war has been so degraded that Ukraine, as a well-armed \u201csteel porcupine,\u201d can hold the Russians permanently at bay. That would likely depend, however, on continued financial support from Europe, which might not last forever, especially if Moscow-friendly right-wing populists seize power in France, Germany, and elsewhere in the coming years. For now, however, things are looking positive: <\/span>At this week\u2019s NATO summit, the Europeans affirmed strong support for Ukraine.<\/p>\n But t<\/span>he Europeans are also <\/span>still holding out hope for peace talks with Putin\u2014although<\/span> it\u2019s very hard to find anyone in Kyiv who believes that he is really willing to negotiate an end to the war. The Ukrainians, who probably understand Russia better than their friends in the West, understand that the only form of peace that Putin can accept<\/span> is one that enshrines his conquests and more\u2014including full control over the Donbas, only part of which Russia has <\/span>managed to seize. Any hint of compromise seems untenable<\/span><\/span> for a Russian president who has linked his fate so intimately with the subduing of Ukraine.<\/p>\n This is where the Crimea campaign takes on additional significance. There are good strategic reasons for dislodging the Russians from the peninsula, which they have used as a conduit for supplies to their forces in southeastern Ukraine. Knock Crimea out of the game, and sustaining the Russian presence in the parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that Russia still holds becomes far more difficult<\/span>.<\/p>\n But the political implications of a Ukrainian victory in Crimea are potentially even more far-reaching. Some policymakers in Kyiv believe that a Russian defeat in the peninsula, whose 2014 seizure Putin still claims as one of his biggest achievements, could fatally undercut his regime. Frolova said that many in Kyiv are drawing a comparison between Putin and Nicholas I, the arch-reactionary Russian tsar who held power for 30 years until he died a broken man in 1855\u2014thanks to a humiliating defeat in the Crimean War.<\/p>\n Despite Ukraine\u2019s remarkable successes, its grand strategy still faces serious challenges. Russia still commands huge resources. It wields <\/span>a large force of ballistic missiles, against which Kyiv has few defenses. (This week, Trump said that he might <\/span>grant a license to the Ukrainians to co-produce an unspecified type of <\/a><\/span>Patriot interceptor<\/a>, which could<\/span> help alleviate part of <\/span>the problem over the long term.) And the Russians can still marshal far more soldiers, a gap that could widen even further if Putin moves ahead with a rumored mobilization plan<\/a><\/span> that could add hundreds of thousands of men to his military.<\/p>\n The plan for now is to keep squeezing Moscow until something breaks. Let\u2019s hope, for the Ukrainians\u2019 sake, that that will happen sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Serhii, a 46-year-old Ukrainian army officer who ran a furniture store in civilian life, has survived four years of war against Russia. These days, he commands a battalion of 300 troops in Ukraine\u2019s front-line city of Sloviansk. After two combat injuries and the loss of many friends, his take on the war is anchored in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11611],"tags":[3549,12426,12371,1488,9497,8868,953,2676,2359,12743,1814,14479,155,2852],"class_list":["post-34645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spyballoon-global-news","tag-finally","tag-geopolitics","tag-homepage_regional_europe","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-oil","tag-russia","tag-theory","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-russia","tag-victory","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-weapons"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2-putin-drowning-man-russia-ukraine-GettyImages-2281563924.jpg",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"SPYBALLOON GLOBAL NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Serhii, a 46-year-old Ukrainian army officer who ran a furniture store in civilian life, has survived four years of war against Russia. These days, he commands a battalion of 300 troops in Ukraine\u2019s front-line city of Sloviansk. After two combat injuries and the loss of many friends, his take on the war is anchored in…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34647,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34645\/revisions\/34647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}