The billowing clouds of smoke over Moscow after Ukraine’s drones hit the Russian capital’s largest oil refinery this week could not have made it clearer: Kyiv’s technological advances have left Vladimir Putin’s forces playing catch-up.
Since Russia’s president ordered the full-scale invasion in 2022, Moscow’s forces have relied on outmanning and outgunning Ukraine on the battlefield while using air strikes to hit cities and energy infrastructure far beyond the front line.
But Ukrainian innovations in mid- and long-range drones have destroyed air bases, army convoys and oil refineries hundreds of kilometres into Russian territory. Meanwhile, Moscow’s troops captured just 164 sq km of territory between February and May, against 1,151 sq km in the same period last year, according to Black Bird Group, a Finnish war monitoring group.