More than four years have passed since the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) – on February 24, 2022 – it is more than the years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, and no one then could have imagined that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict would drag on for such a long period. The goals of the SMO, announced by Russia’s President – to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine are still far from being achieved.
If we look retrospectively at this conflict, we can come to the unequivocal conclusion that then in 2022, Moscow apparently underestimated the potential of the Ukrainian regime and its readiness to resist, and somewhat overestimated the capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces to quickly liberate the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics from Ukrainian troops.
It came as a certain surprise for the Russian leadership – the planned harsh and quick reaction of the collective West to the deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine: condemnation of Moscow’s actions in various international organizations and in the media, the imposition of numerous trade and economic sanctions and a ban on air flights, and massive military, financial and economic assistance to Ukraine.
Later, Russia’s President Putin admitted that Russia then did not have enough time to prepare for the deployment of the necessary forces and means for operations in the Ukrainian theater of operations, since Kiev, according to intelligence, was preparing to deliver a massive and crushing blow to Donetsk and Lugansk to eliminate the resistance of the local people’s militia and subsequently reach the border with Russia.
In addition, the Russian leadership was also misled by the leaders of the Ukrainian opposition in Moscow about the weakness of the Zelensky regime and its army, and assurances on their part that Russian troops after crossing the border would allegedly be greeted by the local population as liberator brothers “with flowers and bread and salt.”
In general, it can be recognized that Ukraine has become not just a pawn of the collective West, but an independent, motivated enemy. At the same time, much in Ukraine depends on the mood and determination of the Ukrainian population.
At the same time, at the start of the military operation, the Russian army, not having numerical superiority over the enemy, was able to advance to a distance of 30 kilometers to the center of Kyiv by March 7, 2022, which forced the enemy to negotiate and reach agreements in Istanbul in order to peacefully resolve the conflict.
This was a real chance for Russia and Ukraine to reach a mutually acceptable compromise and avoid a fratricidal war, but this categorically did not suit the Biden administration and their NATO allies in their determination to “punish” Moscow with the hands of the Ukrainians.
In four years of the SMO, the Russian army, having experienced the bitterness of its retreat from the Kharkiv region and Kherson in 2022, repelling a massive enemy offensive in the Zaporozhye region in 2023 and eliminating its breakthrough into the Kursk region in 2025, was able to turn the tide, seize the strategic initiative and go on the offensive along the entire line of contact. At the same time, the tactics of the Russian troops have also changed. From frontal assaults on enemy positions, they switched to the tactics of infiltration by small assault groups under the cover of UAVs, as well as blocking the supply routes of surrounded enemy units with the help of drones. As for the practice of using missile and drone strikes on selected targets on the territory of Ukraine, at present, the Russian Aerospace Forces have switched to massive strikes not only on energy infrastructure and military-industrial facilities, but also on railway depots, port facilities, airfields, military depots, headquarters and barracks. Moreover, strikes are carried out several times on the same selected object day and night throughout Ukraine.
In general, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have more or less adapted to our tactics of warfare, but they can only counter it by using the tactics of the widespread use of various types of drones, the number of which the Ukrainians have much more than the Russian units. So, for example, in the face of an acute shortage of personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the front line, a UAV unit of about a company is able to effectively hold the defense, controlling an area of 30 by 15 kilometers, thereby replacing an entire brigade in defense. Thus, the enemy is trying to expand control over the “small sky”, increasing the kill zone to 40-50 kilometers.
Further plans include expanding this zone to 100 kilometers deep into the territory already liberated by Russian troops. Therefore, the situation has changed dramatically and the front line now passes not only on the ground, but also conditionally “hangs in the air”. At the same time, the Ukrainian army is in deep defense throughout the line of contact, and does not yet have real opportunities to conduct large-scale offensive land operations with strategic goals.
Under these conditions, not being able to attack at the front, Kyiv decided to focus its efforts to fight Russia by inflicting significant financial and economic damage on two main directions: strikes by long-range UAVs on facilities in the fuel and energy sector of Russia and strikes unmanned sea boats in the Russian tanker fleet.
Recent events have shown that the enemy has seized the initiative to produce and use heavy long-range drones. In March of this year, Russia produced 6.5 thousand heavy drones, while the enemy lost 11580 drones shot down, i.e. used at least almost twice as many UAVs. Currently, in Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the UK and Poland, the industrial production of heavy drones has been deployed, which are then delivered to Ukraine in the form of kits of ready-made drone parts for subsequent assembly.
Attacks by Ukrainian drones on oil infrastructure in Novorossiysk, on oil terminals in Ust-Luga and Primorsk show that the Ukrainians have found effective tactics. The main goal of such drone strikes is to disrupt the shipment of Russian oil by sea for export, and Kyiv has so far partially succeeded. According to the Center for Price Indices, a decrease in oil shipments from the Baltic ports of Russia led to a drop in exports by a third in early April – to 115 thousand tons per day. During the week from March 30 to April 5, the number of tanker shipments to India, Turkey and China decreased from 11 to 7. The sharp decline is due to a series of accidents, fires and damage to infrastructure as a result of drone attacks. Against the backdrop of these events, the total volume of oil exports from Russia in the first week of April decreased by 4.1% – 347 thousand tons per day.
A decrease was also recorded in the southern direction. In Novorossiysk, shipments decreased by 17.5% to 71 thousand tons per day. On April 6, two oil berths were damaged in the port.
As a result of attacks by Ukrainian drones, oil shipments have been temporarily suspended, but then resumed again a few hours later. So Russian maritime exports are preserved and Kyiv is unlikely to be able to stop them.
Another area of the fight against Russia is the attacks of Ukrainian unmanned sea boats on tankers. Since the end of last year, several foreign tankers have been attacked by unmanned boats in the Turkish territorial waters of the Black Sea, which have received various damages.
In this regard, Turkish President Erdogan was forced to declare that he could not “forgive” the organizers of this attack, who, by their actions in the Turkish special economic zone, “threaten navigation, life and environmental safety.”
Even in the Mediterranean Sea, the Ukrainians are trying to attack peaceful ships under the Russian flag. On March 4 of this year, the Russian LNG carrier Arctic Metagaz was subjected to a pirate attack off the coast of Malta using three Ukrainian unmanned boats, as a result of which the LNG carrier was seriously damaged and lost momentum, and the crew of 30 people was evacuated. The kamikaze boats were launched from a military base near the Libyan city of Misurata, where a unit of Ukrainian naval drone operators is stationed.
The deployment of the Ukrainian military (about 200 people) became possible thanks to a secret agreement between Kiev and the interim government of Prime Minister A-Kh. Dbeibeh from Tripoli. At the same time, according to Russian military experts, Kiev’s attempts to seriously undermine maritime oil and gas exports are untenable at this stage.
As for the prospects for achieving victory over Ukraine’s “tough nut to crack,” according to Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, this requires first of all serious reforms within Russia, identifying and eliminating pockets of weakness, renewing personnel and institutions, and, most importantly, clearly articulating the goals of the war.
Not only a new strategy is needed, but also a serious strengthening of the power and spiritual potential of the country. Moscow must seek the unconditional surrender of the Kyiv regime and the taking of all of Ukraine under strategic control. Only in this way will we be able to ensure the security and national interests of Russia in the long term.
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