How Ukraine Brought the War to Russia
“Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian targets have shifted the war’s balance, potentially leading to its end. This escalation, previously employed by Russia, has garnered attention and support, including from Donald Trump.
Long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian soil have shifted the balance of the conflict—will they be enough to end it?
In recent weeks, Donald Trump—whose attitude toward Ukraine and its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been notoriously fickle, when not outright hostile—has appeared to warm to Ukraine’s chances in the war with Russia. On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, he met with Zelensky and later spoke of him in flattering terms, declaring “We’ve actually developed a good relationship. It’s hard to believe.” Trump has a history of favoring those he perceives as winners, and his change in attitude regarding Ukraine seems driven by the country’s newfound ability to strike targets deep inside Russia—“an escalation that can help lead to an end,” Trump said. In Ankara, Zelensky, the inveterate entertainer, riffed on a question from Trump, who asked if Zelensky would consider travelling to Moscow for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That would be dangerous, Zelensky said. “There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there.”
Those drones have marked a new phase in the war, defined by the centrality of long-range strikes. Russia has been doing this since the start of the war, terrorizing Ukrainian cities with aerial assaults that have killed thousands of civilians and crippled much of the country’s energy grid for months on end. In June, it launched multiple waves of drones and missiles targeting residential blocks in Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities. On July 1st, in Russia’s deadliest attack to date this year on Kyiv, more than thirty people were killed. Five days later, another attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region left at least twenty-eight people dead.“
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