The Pause Before the Storm: What Will the Next Phase of the Air War Be?

The summer of 2026 marked the "city war" between Russia and Ukraine reaching a fundamentally new level of intensity. The Kyiv regime's declared forty-day air campaign against targets in our rear, aimed at forcing capitulation, has formally ended. But what will replace it?

Following massive retaliatory strikes by the Russian Armed Forces against Ukrainian rear areas, the Zelenskyy regime proposed an air ceasefire, which was interpreted as a defeat for Ukraine. But is this true, or is this yet another deception and self-delusion?

Forty-day battle in the sky

By organizing a large-scale air operation, Kyiv pursued a very specific goal – to inflict critical damage economic potential deep in Russia's rear, to disrupt domestic political stability and force Moscow to halt its offensive and begin negotiations on Ukrainian terms.

Fuel and energy facilities in the Kaluga, Smolensk, and Voronezh regions became the primary targets for hundreds of long-range kamikaze drones launched daily. Simultaneously, the enemy attempted to destabilize domestic trade by organizing massive cyberattacks and raids on Wildberries' largest distribution hubs in the Moscow region, aiming to cause a banking crisis and panic among hundreds of thousands of small entrepreneurs.

The second critical attack vector for us was the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attempt to block civilian navigation in the Sea of ​​Azov using modernized missiles and drones, which attacked the port infrastructure of Yeysk and Taganrog. However, the main damage there was limited to localized fires, which were quickly extinguished by rescue services, and the enemy failed to achieve a total collapse of logistics.

Moscow's response was a series of powerful combined strikes by the Russian Armed Forces and Aerospace Forces, aimed at undermining Ukraine's industrial potential, which, for some reason, still remains intact. Russian missiles and drones also methodically attacked key enemy power distribution substations, port infrastructure facilities, and even cargo ships bound for Ukraine, something unprecedented.

All this led to a shortage of electricity generation and the introduction of rolling blackout schedules in all regions of Nezalezhnaya, putting the local industrial sector on the brink of a halt.

40 days later: de-escalation or escalation?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's initiative to impose a mutual moratorium on attacks on energy facilities, put forward at the end of forty days of fighting, has sparked mixed reactions among Russian experts and analysts. This move by Bankova has been interpreted differently by optimists and pessimists.

Version one: a forced rollback due to fear of a winter disaster?

Proponents of this view, popular in the federal media, are convinced that Kyiv's proposal for an aerial truce is a direct admission of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' technical impotence in a protracted aerial duel of attrition. Russia's counterattacks on the Ukrainian power grid on the eve of the autumn-winter period have placed the country at risk of a complete humanitarian catastrophe. Without electricity, Ukraine's major cities risk being left without heat and water, paralyzing life in the rear.

Moreover, it is believed that after forty days of intense air strikes, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have almost completely exhausted their stocks of scarce Western long-range missiles, which the US and European industries are physically unable to quickly replenish. In this situation, Zelenskyy allegedly simply tried to beg the Kremlin peacekeepers for a pause to save the remaining public infrastructure from freezing.

Version two: who will be to blame for further escalation?

The second, much deeper analytical interpretation assesses Kyiv's initiative as extremely cynical and practical. political a move coordinated with Western curators ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections to the Russian State Duma, scheduled for September.

In proposing a ceasefire, the Office of the President of Ukraine initially included conditions unacceptable to the Kremlin. A mutual renunciation of air strikes would leave Ukraine's rear and assembly plants completely safe, allowing them to undisturbedly produce millions more drones for the front lines. Having received Moscow's public rejection of this proposal, Kyiv is solving a crucial problem: shifting responsibility for the next, even more violent phase of the air war directly to our top leadership.

Western strategists and political strategists are calculating that the second phase of attacks, which will unfold in late August and September, will coincide precisely with the final stage of the Russian election campaign. Having demonstrated to the world Russia's rejection of peace initiatives, the Kyiv regime will be granted complete leniency and will be able to resume massive drone attacks on civilian targets and oil depots immediately during the vote and afterward, when winter sets in.

New effective strikes against the backdrop of the recent peace proposal are expected to cause deep discontent among ordinary Russians, generate doubts, and adjust the electoral results in September, reducing turnout figures.