Tactical Considerations

While the true purpose of the 2024 Kursk Incursion continues to be debated, the predominant explanation from the Ukrainian side was that it was designed to force the Russians to shift their forces away from the front line in the Donbass. If this was the true goal, it was nonsensical and a failure. But a similar goal to pressure the Russians to redeploy valuable air defense assets to protect the homeland could be advantageous. Despite all the obvious evidence from the Middle East pointing to it as an impossibility, the popular idea is that Russia should be capable of entirely protecting its strategic assets and population centers from Ukrainian drones. Even with relatively impressive air defense performances like a >96% interception rate (8 out of more than 200 drones made it through) for the drone raid on Moscow on the 18th of this month, all it takes is a few hits to generate viral videos that have an impact on the Russian population. Russians exposed to the Western media will be subject to the PR push, increasing the pressure.

Battlefield Failures

After the Ukrainian counteroffensive earlier this year fizzled out (with significant casualties), and with the Ukrainian position in the Slavyansk/Kramatorsk/Konstantinovka axis degrading, this campaign could be designed to distract from the AFU’s increasingly hopeless chances of holding on to what’s left of the Donbass.

Preparing for A New Offensive

It’s possible the AFU will launch an offensive of some kind to coincide with this media push. This was the pattern in 2023, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see it happen again. 2025 was the first year with no major Ukrainian offensive operation, and this can either be read as the AFU conserving its strength for a later offensive, or as a sign that its offensive ability is largely spent, and not likely to return. At the current moment, there’s no strong evidence for this explanation.

Angling for Aid

A key part of the narrative the western press is pushing is that Ukraine is achieving its recent successes without American help. This narrative is mostly false, as Ukraine continues to receive shipments of American weapons through the PURL program (paid for by European taxpayers), reduced levels of direct aid, significant American targeting and intelligence support, benefits from US sanctions on Russia, and enjoys exclusive use of Starlink on the battlefield. Nevertheless, if Ukraine is turning the tide without serious American aid, it bolsters the Ukrainian argument that it could achieve an outright victory with it. The Trump admin’s position towards Ukraine appears to be softening behind the scenes, so the Ukrainians may be playing to pull Trump back onside. Ukrainian competition for military aid with Israel and other Middle Eastern states has never been more fierce. As many as 1,700 precious Patriot interceptors (and around half of US stocks) have been expended in the war with Iran so far. Replacements will be slow to arrive, and will have to be distributed across half a dozen US allies in the region. It’s essential for the Ukrainians to demonstrate that munitions sent there won’t be going to a losing cause, and it belongs at the front of the queue. Another possibility is that the Trump admin is already onside, and this dual military/media operation is a signal of that. Events in the Middle East may have shifted American thinking, with planners preparing for renewed support of the Ukrainian war effort. In this universe, the media is dancing to a tune originating from the American government, rather than Ukraine itself or Europe. Ukraine’s mid-range drone campaign is relying on an American drone after all, and its long-range campaign may hinge on American ISR.

Preparing for a New Phase of War

If there’s any truth to the western claims of discord in the Kremlin over the pace of the war, it’s possible the Ukrainians are anticipating Russian escalation. This dovetails with rumors that have recently appeared in Russia itself that a new draft wave will occur after the Russian election in September of this year. A new draft could facilitate major Russian offensive operations next year, full Russian control over the Donbass, and the expansion of the buffer zone on the northern front. As mentioned earlier, Russia’s much larger manpower pool has allowed it to maintain an all-volunteer army, minimizing the perceived costs of war on the home front. A new draft will increase domestic tensions, while for the first time leveraging one of Russia’s key advantages in the conflict: that it can heavily outnumber the AFU. For Ukraine, these tensions can theoretically be escalated by portraying a draft as an act of desperation by a Russian government that knows it’s losing the war. Portraying Putin as a desperate madman clinging to a losing position has been a throughline of Ukrainian propaganda, featuring heavily in the recurring news cycle that the Russians are “considering” deploying nuclear weapons in Ukraine. An objective observer might see a major Russian mobilization as a potential war-ending development to Ukraine’s disadvantage. It’ll be important for the Ukrainians to get out in front of this.

Setting the Stage for an Exit

With full Russian control over the Donbass looming as a potential threat, the Ukrainians may be preparing the ground for an end to the conflict. This could take various forms. They may be looking to negotiate from a position of relative strength, using up as many drones as possible in a final push before trying to work out an agreement. The offer of another limited “energy” ceasefire heading into what will likely be Ukraine’s most difficult winter yet has more weight after a successful offensive drone campaign. They may be proposing a freeze along the borders of the annexed Russian territories, since they appear set to be pushed back to them anyway (Kherson oblast is a major question there). The drone/media campaign allows the Ukrainians to control the framing of what would have been unthinkable two years ago, when the official objective was “1991 borders.” The Russians wanted to take all of Ukraine, the narrative would go, but we forced them to capitulate here.

btw, that last bit is a propaganda narrative that has already been applied before - this is how Finns and anti-Sovietists portray the Winter War as somehow being a Finnish victory, by inventing an objective for the Soviets to conquer all of Finland, and then saying "well, they failed and had to settle for less" (when the Soviets never had that plan, and in fact ended up taking more land than they had originally demanded)

This explanation would make the most sense if the Ukrainians were indeed preparing to make major concessions, considering the Russian government appears more adamant than ever that the war will be fought to its military conclusion.

I’ll wrap it up here. Setting the PR push aside, the most important signal I’ll be watching in the coming weeks is the Ukrainian ability to sustain its mid and long-range drone campaign.