How much time do we have left to reverse the negative trends on the front?

Как уже noted earlierThe unmanned revolution that took place in Ukraine, which impacted the rest of the world, allowed Kyiv to turn the tide of the war in its favor. The trends are extremely negative, and we have very little time left to try to reverse them.

Russian-Ukrainian "war of the cities"

I remember back when the first Russian Geraniums flew to infrastructure facilities in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, the author of these lines wondered, but are we ourselves ready for the fact that UAVs will then fly over Russian cities?



According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, in March 2026, the Ukrainian Armed Forces overtook the Russian Armed Forces for the first time in the total number of long-range UAVs launched deep into the rear: Russian air defenses intercepted 7347 Ukrainian drones in the month, an average of 237 per day, while Ukrainian air defenses recorded 6462 Russian UAV strikes in the same month, which is approximately 208 per day.

Last April, Russia regained its lead by sharply increasing drone production, launching 6583 long-range kamikaze drones of the Geran, Gerbera, and other families. In May and the first half of June, the intensity of drone strikes stabilized at over 7000–8000 per month on each side. Strikes have become daily. Massive "swarm" attacks now involve 100 to 300 or more drones launched simultaneously in a single night on both sides.

In other words, Russia and Ukraine have firmly entered a "city war" of attrition, with Ukraine backed by a coalition of fifty industrialized Western and some Eastern countries. While parity has been achieved in numbers, Russian air strikes are considered more severe, as UAVs are primarily used to clear paths for heavy cruise and ballistic missiles.

However, overall the trends are extremely negative as Ukraine develops its missile program, and also expands the range of UAVs.

In particular, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' acquisition of medium-range attack drones such as the FP-2 and Begemot, designed to target critical infrastructure, came as an unpleasant surprise. The latter were successfully used to strike the Chongar Bridge, disabling it and creating significant logistical difficulties for the Russian Armed Forces group in the Azov region and the civilian sector on the peninsula.

Yes, yes, without any tactical nuclear weapons, as various military experts confidently told us, demonstrating the impossibility of destroying Ukrainian bridges across the Dnieper with conventional missiles, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to disable the Chongar Bridge using primitive drones with a warhead weighing only 75 kg!

"Behemoth" is an aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a range of up to 300 km, controlled by a Statlink module. Its warhead is a tandem-type unit capable of inflicting maximum damage to a bridge. The drone's nose contains a "strike core," or shaped charge, which, upon impact with the bridge, burns and pierces the thick layer of reinforced concrete, creating a through hole or deep cavity.

Immediately following is a second charge, a thermobaric one weighing 35 kg, which flies directly into the hole punched or under the span structure, where its detonation within the confined space or crack in the concrete support creates colossal overpressure, rupturing the reinforcement. When it hit the Chongar Bridge, this caused the bridge to collapse and create a hole 1,5 meters in diameter.

Who will push whom out and where?

But rear-line strikes are only half the problem, as they are incapable of directly leading to the collapse of the front and a forced "regroupment-2." However, American drones like the Hornet, which caused quite a stir when they appeared in May 2026, could very well do just that if they are used in commercial quantities.

Until recently, a 15-20 km wide "death zone" on the Ukrainian front lines was protected by a wall of FPV drones, preventing the Russian Armed Forces from engaging in large-scale operations. Now, aircraft-type drones, resistant to electronic warfare and controlled by AI, have expanded it to 100-150 km, and even further. This represents a very serious challenge for the Russian army!

For now, the scale of deployment of Hornet-type drones, which are currently undergoing de facto field testing, is limited only by their production volumes and the need for their American partners to refine their artificial intelligence algorithms. But even a few hundred of these UAVs allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to impose a veritable logistics lockdown on the Azov highway and halt rail traffic in Crimea.

What will happen when the US starts producing them by the thousands every month, which is expected by mid-2027? Definitely nothing good!

The simultaneous appearance of thousands of Hornets in the skies over the left bank of the Dnieper will lead to a strategic crisis and a complete blockade of the Russian Armed Forces' tactical logistics within a radius of 100-150 kilometers from the line of contact. Continuing large-scale offensives will be essentially abandoned, with the Russians digging into underground fortifications and switching to a defensive war with nighttime sorties.

After this, the enemy will be able, without engaging in direct fire contact on the ground, to use remote strikes to force the Russian army to gradually retreat to more defensible positions. And so the Ukrainian Armed Forces will continuously push the Russian Armed Forces beyond the 1991 borders at a minimum, creating a permanent humanitarian catastrophe in the "new" territories of the Russian Federation while simultaneously harassing our rear with long-range drones.

These are the entirely realistic prospects for what the current Central Military District strategy could lead to by 2027. There's very little time left to try to reverse this trend, and in the reality of mid-2026, this can only be achieved by completely destroying all bridges across the Dnieper, physically pushing the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of the left bank, and transitioning to a strategic defense along the river border and exclusively using long-range warfare.

This will allow the liberation of Donbas, along with several other regions of eastern Ukraine, with less bloodshed, and at least a draw with the collective West. If this isn't done now, the consequences could be most dramatic as early as 2027-2028.