- Ukraine's deep-strike campaign has damaged one-sixth of Russia's fuel production with U.S. intelligence enabling precision targeting 750+ km inside Russia
- Russia absorbed 1.1 million casualties since 2022 yet maintains offensive operations, questioning whether infrastructure strikes can force strategic recalculation
- Potential Tomahawk transfer of only 20-50 missiles unlikely to alter battlefield dynamics compared to Ukraine's growing indigenous drone production capabilities
In the early hours of October 13, flames erupted across an oil depot in Feodosia, Crimea, as Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russian-occupied territory. Eleven fuel tanks were damaged, ten of them filled—a single raid that exemplified Ukraine's accelerating campaign to cripple Russia's military logistics at their source. This wasn't an isolated incident. From Bashkortostan to the Black Sea, Ukrainian forces have systematically targeted oil refineries, military production facilities, and fuel depots, creating what one Western intelligence official described as a "strategic hemorrhage" for Moscow's war machine.
The transformation is striking: Ukraine, once struggling to defend its own cities from Russian missile barrages, has evolved into an offensive force capable of striking targets over 750 kilometers inside Russia with increasing precision. Updated U.S. intelligence support has enabled Ukrainian drones to penetrate Russian air defenses with unprecedented effectiveness, while discussions around supplying BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv signal a potential quantum leap in Ukraine's deep-strike capabilities. Yet as Russia's October ground offensive largely stalled and Ukrainian forces regained some previously lost territory, a critical question emerges: Can Ukraine's long-range campaign fundamentally alter the strategic balance, or will Russia's vast resources and industrial capacity allow Moscow to absorb these losses and continue its grinding war of attrition?
The intelligence edge: How American support transformed Ukraine's targeting
Ukraine's surge in successful deep strikes didn't happen by accident. According to an October 12 Financial Times report, the United States has been providing Ukraine with detailed intelligence to facilitate its long-range strike campaign against Russia's energy sector, including oil refineries. This intelligence sharing represents a significant escalation in Western support, enabling Ukrainian forces to identify vulnerabilities in Russian air defenses and optimize strike timing for maximum effect.
The results speak for themselves. Ukrainian forces struck three separate targets in occupied Crimea on the night of October 12-13, with geolocated footage and NASA satellite data confirming the hits. Russian opposition outlet Astra reported that the Feodosia attack damaged eleven fuel tanks at the oil terminal, including eight tanks holding diesel fuel with capacities between 5,000 and 10,000 metric tons each, two tanks holding gasoline, and one empty tank. Crimea occupation head Sergei Aksyonov acknowledged the strikes, though he downplayed their impact—a pattern that has become familiar as Ukrainian attacks have accelerated markedly since August 2025.
The intelligence support has proven particularly valuable in countering Russia's layered air defense systems. Ukrainian drone operators can now identify gaps in coverage, exploit electronic warfare vulnerabilities, and coordinate swarm attacks that overwhelm Russian interception capabilities. "The Ukrainian government has introduced an experimental mechanism to transfer technologies developed within the Ministry of Defense system into mass production," according to Ukrainian sources, suggesting Kyiv is rapidly institutionalizing lessons learned from these intelligence-supported operations.
What happens when American spy satellites and Ukrainian drones team up? The answer is reshaping modern warfare—and Putin's worst nightmare is unfolding 700+ kilometers inside Russia. Discover how this intelligence partnership turned Ukraine from defender to deep-strike predator.
Russia's energy infrastructure: A target-rich environment under siege
The scale of Ukraine's campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has been remarkable. Since August 2025, Ukrainian forces have dramatically accelerated attacks on oil refineries and fuel depots across Russia, causing fires and substantial damage that have exacerbated Moscow's fuel supply shortages. On October 13, Ukrainian strikes on an oil depot in Feodosia damaged storage capacity equivalent to tens of thousands of metric tons of fuel—fuel that would have supported Russian military operations in occupied Ukraine.
The targeting is strategic, not random. A March 2024 journalistic investigation estimated that Ukrainian strikes had rendered facilities accounting for one-sixth of Russia's production of gasoline and diesel fuels non-operational. These aren't just economic targets; they're military ones. Russian forces rely on a constant flow of fuel to maintain their offensive operations, and Ukraine's strikes are designed to create logistical bottlenecks that slow Russian advances and force Moscow to divert resources to protection and repair.
The challenge for Russia is that repair and replacement of damaged energy infrastructure are severely hindered by international sanctions and operational challenges. Russia has been forced to increase its reliance on diesel imports from Belarus and China to sustain domestic demand, according to sources tracking the conflict. This dependency creates new vulnerabilities: supply lines that can be disrupted, political relationships that can sour, and costs that accumulate over time.
Ukrainian forces have also targeted military production facilities with increasing frequency. The August 11 strike on the Arzamas Instrument-Building Plant, which produces components for cruise missiles, demonstrated Ukraine's ability to hit targets nearly 800 kilometers from its border. "According to preliminary information, at least four drones of the SBU's Special Operations Center 'A' struck the target," a Security Service of Ukraine source claimed. The plant's production of gyroscopic instruments, control systems, and onboard computers for Kh-32 and Kh-101 missiles—weapons regularly used against Ukrainian cities—made it a priority target.
The attacks have created a cascading effect. Russian air defenses must now protect a vastly expanded perimeter, stretching resources thin. On August 11, Russian authorities claimed to have shot down 32 Ukrainian drones overnight across multiple regions, plus seven more in the morning—a defensive effort that still failed to prevent damage to industrial facilities in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. In Tula Oblast, 12 Ukrainian drones were reportedly shot down, yet a civilian enterprise was still hit, killing two people and injuring three.
The Tomahawk question: Game-changer or strategic gamble?
Discussions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former U.S. President Donald Trump around October 11-12 have raised the prospect of supplying BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. The potential transfer has generated intense debate about whether these long-range cruise missiles could significantly amplify Ukraine's deep-strike capabilities—or whether logistical and political constraints would limit their impact.
The numbers tell a sobering story. According to the Financial Times, the United States has been able to offer Ukraine only 20-50 Tomahawk missiles—a quantity that experts say is unlikely to materially change combat dynamics or the battlefield situation. Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, estimated that the U.S. has approximately 4,150 Tomahawk missiles in total. However, the Pentagon bought only 200 Tomahawks in 2022 and has already expended more than 120 of them; the U.S. Department of Defense has requested funding for just 57 additional Tomahawks in its 2026 budget.
"They would project a very limited capability, certainly not enough to enable sustained, deep attacks against Russia," said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security think tank. The missiles would serve primarily as a supplement to Ukraine's existing arsenal of long-range attack drones and cruise missiles, rather than a transformative capability.
Russia has dismissed the idea that Tomahawks could alter the frontline situation, though former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Trump's potential supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine could "end badly" for everyone. Medvedev, who served as Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, signaled Russia's response could be nuclear if Ukraine gets and fires Tomahawk missiles deep inside Russia—a threat that follows a familiar pattern of Russian escalation rhetoric.
Operating Tomahawk missiles would present significant challenges for Ukraine. The weapons require sophisticated launch platforms, targeting data, and potentially U.S. personnel for technical support—raising concerns about escalation. Trump himself expressed ambivalence, saying "I may say that the Tomahawk is an incredible weapon, very offensive weapon. And honestly, Russia does not need that," while also indicating he was considering the request.
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The grinding war: Russia's stalled offensive and mounting casualties
While Ukraine's deep-strike campaign has captured headlines, the ground war continues with brutal intensity. Russian advances observed during August and September 2025 have largely stalled in October, with Ukrainian forces regaining some previously lost territory—a shift in momentum that has surprised some observers who expected continued Russian gains.
On October 14, Russian forces conducted multiple company- and battalion-sized mechanized assaults in priority areas of Donetsk Oblast, sustaining offensive pressure despite strategic setbacks and high casualties. These assaults marked an inflection in recent Russian armor usage; Russian forces had largely stopped conducting reinforced company-sized mechanized assaults in late 2024 and had conducted only a handful of battalion-sized mechanized assaults during 2025. The return to larger mechanized operations suggests Russian commanders are attempting to achieve breakthroughs in their priority areas, particularly around the Pokrovsk and Dobropillia sectors.
The human cost has been staggering. Russia has likely sustained approximately 332,000 casualties (killed and wounded) in the Ukraine war so far in 2025, and approximately 1,118,000 casualties since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to estimates based on various sources. On October 14 alone, Russia suffered approximately 1,200 soldiers killed or wounded. A leaked Russian military document analyzed by the "I Want to Live" Ukrainian government initiative indicated that 281,550 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded, or lost in action in the first eight months of 2025 alone.
These casualty figures are extraordinary by any historical standard. Russia has suffered roughly five times as many fatalities in Ukraine as in all Russian and Soviet wars since World War II combined. The rate of loss—averaging over 1,000 casualties per day during intensive periods—exceeds even the bloodiest phases of the Soviet-Afghan War. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of military commanders on October 15 that "at this time, the Russian armed forces fully hold the strategic initiative," suggesting Moscow's willingness to absorb these losses in pursuit of its objectives.
The reality on the ground is more complex. In the Pokrovsk district of Donetsk region, Ukraine's Defense Forces eliminated Russian occupiers across an area of 3.4 square kilometers and advanced up to 1.6 kilometers in certain sectors over a 24-hour period in mid-October. Ukrainian drone operators struck a quad bike and a boat belonging to Russian invaders on the southern front, where Russian forces carried out over 620 strikes with kamikaze drones—the average current intensity of such attacks.
Russian forces have partially entered the outskirts of the villages of Kucheriv Yar and Shakhove in Donetsk region, but fighting continues there, and the situation remains under the control of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, according to Ukrainian sources. Russian invading forces have significantly increased the number of fire strikes in the eastern sector of the front, with the intensity of shelling rising by 25-30% over the past ten days compared to the previous period—yet this increased firepower has not translated into significant territorial gains.
The drone war: Innovation and escalation on both sides
The war has increasingly become a contest of unmanned systems, with both sides racing to develop and deploy new drone technologies. Russian forces have been increasingly targeting Ukrainian logistics routes and positions using mothership unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly motherships based on variants of the Orlan and Molniya fixed-wing drones, since at least August 2025. Ukrainian forces reported shooting down a Russian Orlan reconnaissance UAV that functioned as a mothership and carried two first-person-view UAVs for the first time on August 22.
The enemy has carried out over 620 strikes with kamikaze drones on the southern front over the past 24 hours, representing the average current intensity of such attacks. This volume of drone strikes reflects Russia's massive investment in domestic production; Russia is already capable of producing around 30,000 Shahed-type unmanned aerial vehicles per year, potentially doubling this number by 2026. Russia is expected to regularly launch over 2,000 drones per salvo by fall 2025.
Ukraine has responded with its own innovations. Operators of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces delivered precision strikes on Russian equipment on the Donetsk front, destroying a BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket system and five Russian tanks, according to the Command of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces. Fighters of the 427th Raroh Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment repelled a Russian assault by striking armored vehicles that were covering the advance of infantry groups, preventing the Russians from continuing their offensive.
The drone war has also extended to Russian territory. Since the start of the day on October 14, 113 combat engagements took place along the frontline between Ukraine's Defense Forces and Russian troops, with fighting continuing in six sectors of the front. Ukrainian drones struck Russian positions as far as Ufa in Bashkortostan, one of the deepest strikes into Russian territory to date.
Russian forces have continued to target Ukrainian civilian infrastructure with drones and missiles. On the evening of October 13 and throughout the night of October 14, Russian forces launched attacks on civilian, railway, and energy infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv, as well as in the Kirovohrad, Sumy, and Donetsk regions. Over the past day, Russian forces shelled the city of Kharkiv and eight settlements in Kharkiv region with various types of weapons, injuring 62 civilians.
The sounds of explosions were heard during air raid alerts in Kharkiv as Russian forces bombarded the city with precision bomb strikes. In the border town of Semenivka, Chernihiv region, a Russian-launched drone targeted a store, killing a man and leaving a woman injured. Russian forces have once again attacked the town with drones, striking a residential building.
Strategic implications: Can Ukraine's campaign change the calculus?
Ukraine's intensifying missile and drone campaign, bolstered by U.S. intelligence support and the potential acquisition of Tomahawk missiles, represents a significant evolution in the conflict. The campaign is causing unprecedented damage to Russian energy infrastructure deep inside Russian territory, critically undermining Russia's military logistics and economic resilience. Yet whether these strikes can fundamentally alter the strategic balance remains an open question.
The evidence suggests that Ukraine's deep-strike campaign is having real effects. Repair and replacement of Russian energy infrastructure are hindered by international sanctions and operational challenges, forcing increased reliance on diesel imports from Belarus and China to sustain domestic demand. Select Russian industries are showing signs of steep decline that risk lasting damage with potentially deep socio-economic repercussions, according to Institute for the Study of War assessments.
However, Russia's war economy remains resilient. Russia dedicated roughly 40 percent of national public spending to the war effort and related security costs, with defense spending for 2025 projected at 7.2 percent of GDP. The Kremlin has mobilized civilian enterprises to produce military-related goods and moved the defense industry to round-the-clock production. Even if Russia exhausts its stockpiles, it can continue intermittent missile and drone attacks on Ukraine as new systems are produced.
The strategic question is whether Ukraine can impose costs on Russia faster than Russia can adapt and absorb them. Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure create immediate tactical problems for Russian military operations, but Russia's vast territory and industrial base provide strategic depth that smaller nations lack. A journalistic investigation estimated that Ukrainian strikes had rendered facilities accounting for one-sixth of Russia's gasoline and diesel production non-operational—a significant achievement, but one that still leaves five-sixths operational.
The psychological and political dimensions may ultimately matter more than the purely military ones. Ukrainian strikes that affect daily civilian life in Russia—fuel shortages, airport closures, drone alerts in cities far from Ukraine—could shift public sentiment even if Putin maintains a sizeable National Guard paramilitary force to quash dissent. Weakened Russian support for the war and rising economic strain could pressure the Kremlin to reconsider its strategy, though Putin has shown little sign of such reconsideration thus far.
Conclusion
Ukraine's deep-strike campaign represents a remarkable transformation in the character of the war. A nation that began the conflict struggling to defend its own airspace has evolved into a force capable of striking targets nearly 800 kilometers inside Russia with increasing precision and frequency. The combination of updated U.S. intelligence support, rapidly improving Ukrainian drone technology, and potential access to Western long-range missiles like the Tomahawk has created new vulnerabilities for Russia that Moscow cannot easily address.
Yet the fundamental strategic dynamic remains largely unchanged. Russia continues to hold the initiative on the ground in Donetsk, launching battalion-sized mechanized assaults despite suffering extraordinary casualties. Russian forces have absorbed over 1.1 million casualties since February 2022 without fundamentally altering the Kremlin's strategic objectives. Putin's willingness to sustain these losses suggests that Ukraine's deep strikes, however damaging, have not yet reached the threshold necessary to force a Russian strategic recalculation.
The next six to twelve months will be critical. If Ukraine can sustain and expand its deep-strike campaign while preventing Russian breakthroughs on the ground, Moscow may face an increasingly untenable position: unable to achieve decisive military victory, suffering mounting economic costs, and vulnerable to strikes across its vast territory. Conversely, if Russian forces can achieve significant territorial gains despite Ukrainian strikes, or if Western support for Ukraine's long-range capabilities wanes, Moscow may conclude that it can outlast Kyiv in a war of attrition.
The Tomahawk question, while generating intense debate, may be less important than the trajectory of Ukraine's indigenous capabilities and Western intelligence support. Twenty to fifty missiles, however sophisticated, cannot fundamentally alter a conflict of this scale. But a sustained campaign of intelligence-guided strikes using thousands of Ukrainian-produced drones, supplemented by select use of Western precision weapons, could gradually erode Russia's capacity to sustain offensive operations—if Ukraine and its partners maintain the political will to see the strategy through.
