How Ukraine’s 40-day summer drone campaign to end the war with Russia backfired

On June 25, at the height of Ukraine’s long-range drone success, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he had approved a 40-day plan to compel Moscow to end the war through an intensified strike campaign. As part of the surge, Ukraine chose two new strategic targets to ramp up pressure on the Russian populace: Wildberries […]

On June 25, at the height of Ukraine’s long-range drone success, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he had approved a 40-day plan to compel Moscow to end the war through an intensified strike campaign.

As part of the surge, Ukraine chose two new strategic targets to ramp up pressure on the Russian populace: Wildberries warehouses, Russia’s equivalent to Amazon, and fuel ships supplying Crimea. Kyiv argued the warehouses held dual-use goods, and that hitting them would impose an immediate cost on ordinary Russians, who would pressure the Kremlin to end the war. The shipping strikes aimed to strangle Crimea into an energy and supply crisis.

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Kyiv argued the warehouses held dual-use goods, and that hitting them would impose an immediate cost on ordinary Russians, who would pressure the Kremlin to end the war. The shipping strikes aimed to strangle Crimea into an energy and supply crisis.

Each campaign started strong. With air defenses concentrated around energy and military sites, civilian warehouses and shipping were largely exposed. From July 6 to 10, Ukrainian drones struck 35 Russian vessels, including 14 in a single night. The world became awash with images of burning warehouses blackening out the sky, and fuel shortages in Crimea became more acute.

Russian air defenses soon adapted. Of far greater consequence, however, was Moscow’s decision to overhaul its own strike doctrine in response.

Strangling Odesa

The Greater Odesa ports, Ukraine’s only access to the Black Sea and an economic lifeline, were blockaded early in the war, but reopened under a Turkish-negotiated deal. After it collapsed in 2023, Russia opted against another blockade, likely out of fear of retaliation against its own shadow fleet or attacks against shipping to Crimea. Russia first began stepping up attacks on Odesa in December, but these remained only disruptive, rather than crippling, with Moscow’s mind on the escalation ladder.

After Ukraine’s drone blitz in the Black and Azov seas, the gloves came off. Beginning July 11, Moscow launched a sustained drone and missile campaign against the port city, hitting fuel depots, ships, and port facilities at an intensity not seen since the war’s beginning.

The inflection point came on July 19, when Russia targeted and sank the Turkish-owned MV Golden Leo as it left the nearby port of Chornomorsk with three cruise missiles, killing 10 crewmen.

“Since then every vessel entering or leaving Odessa has been targeted,” the Economist reported.

People sun bathe, as the burning grain carrier Golden Leo under the Guinea-Bissau flag after Russian missile strike is seen on the horizon in the Black Sea in Odesa, Ukraine, Sunday, July 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Shtekel)

Russia’s S8000 Banderol, a cheap jet-powered cruise missile, proved ideal for hunting cargo ships while evading the port’s depleted air defenses.

By July 30, the port was under a “de facto blockade,” RBC Ukraine reported, with Maersk and CMA CGM canceling all port calls to Greater Odesa and diverting them to Constanta, Romania. Ukraine offered a mutual Black Sea truce by mid-August, which Russia ignored.

On Sept. 21, Ukrainian Ports Association president Dmytro Barinov revealed that over 300 vessels had been damaged or destroyed since the missile and drone campaign began. The Ukrainian Agribusiness Club told grain traders to expect Odesa to remain closed through the winter.

“This is an unprecedented situation, when civilian vessels are not simply struck but methodically finished off and destroyed, to deny us the ability to conduct trade,” Ukrainian Major Gen. Vadim Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, told RBC-Ukraine on Aug. 10.

The damage is difficult to overstate. “One ship of 100,000 tons is equivalent to 5,000 trucks, 5,000 drivers, and 5,000 border procedures,” Barinov explained to the Economist, adding that the current situation is the worst of the entire war, as Danube routes that offset losses in 2022 suffer from low water and Russian attacks.

The exports can’t all be diverted overland either, especially as Russia’s sustained attacks on Ukraine’s locomotive fleet are degrading the most efficient overland route.

Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky estimated that Ukraine has over 60 million tons of agricultural products awaiting export, requiring about 5 million tons of monthly capacity. Assuming the complete closure of Greater Odessa ports, alternative routes can only reach half of this total, according to Ag Bull, and that estimate assumes full railroad capacity and use of Danube routes.

The World Bank put Ukraine’s GDP in 2024 at $190.74 billion, and its exports at $41.6 billion. Ukraine’s Economy Ministry says more than 60% of merchandise exports, and 89% of agricultural exports, pass through its seaports. That leaves roughly $25 billion in annual exports, about 13% of GDP, at the mercy of ports that are now commercially dead.

Vysotsky told Reuters in early August that the agricultural sector alone could lose as much as $3 billion this year. Ferrexpo halted mining and suspended two major steel plants on Aug. 5. Mining and metallurgy made up 15.2% of Ukraine’s export revenue in 2025.

Emptying the shelves

Russia’s warehouse retaliation came even faster. On July 18, the day of Ukraine’s first Wildberries strikes, Moscow launched one of the war’s largest missile barrages on Kyiv. Warehouses quickly became a top target, and later concentrated assaults were framed as explicit retaliation, including an Aug. 5 strike hitting Rozetka, Epicentr, Novus, and Silpo warehouses in Kyiv.

Some analysts dispute any link, noting Russia struck warehouses earlier in the war. But most agree that July brought a sudden shift toward systematically targeting them, coinciding with Ukraine’s Wildberries campaign. Warehouses are often hit by the small waves of Russian jet-powered drones that now plague Ukrainian skies throughout the day. Before long, photos of empty shelves in Kyiv stores were circulating on social media, a sight unseen since the war’s opening months.

Firefighters put out a fire after Russian missiles hit a warehouse in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

Ruslan Shostak, co-owner of the Eva and Varus retail chains, estimates that Russia has destroyed 2.1 million square meters of Ukraine’s modern warehouse space, roughly 42%, a figure also reported by the Financial Times. Almost one-fifth of the country’s total capacity was wiped out in the last few months alone. By comparison, Ukrainian analyst Oleg Belinsky estimated that Ukraine’s drones had destroyed 1.9 million of Russia’s 56.5 million square meters, about 3.4%.

A growing imbalance of costs

The shift in the summer drone campaign stirred disillusionment in Kyiv. As early as July 8, former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny warned in the Telegraph that the long-range drone campaign was “expensive, technologically demanding and ultimately reciprocal. Russia retains the ability to strike back with equal or greater force.”

“Cash flows are deteriorating, finished goods are accumulating, prices and demand are changing, and production and logistics chains are being disrupted,” National Bank of Ukraine Governor Andriy Pyshny wrote in a July 31 Facebook post discussing the strikes, warning that businesses’ ability to service loans was eroding.

The naval war structurally favors Russia. Only 25-30% of its oil exports, its biggest revenue source, pass through the Black Sea. It also has Baltic, Arctic, and Pacific ports and an unmolested rail network. Ukraine ships everything seaborne through the Black Sea. Ukraine also depends on commercial insurers, who fled, while Russia’s shadow fleet sails wherever Moscow orders.

“It’s as if we played open football with the Brazilians,” a former senior official told the Economist. “We scored three and are celebrating, but they scored 13.”

UKRAINE’S DRONE CAMPAIGN AGAINST RUSSIA’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE TAKES A TOLL, BUT FALLS SHORT OF A GAME CHANGER

As Strana noted in August, Russian strikes on Black Sea shipping were isolated before the summer, because Moscow feared Ukrainian retaliation against its own vessels. By launching its July shipping campaign, Kyiv threw away that escalation leverage. The Wildberries campaign did the same for warehouses, stripping away Russia’s reservations just as Ukraine was running out of interceptor missiles.

The Aug. 4 deadline to end the war arrived with little fanfare, and with no comment from Kyiv.

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