Will the Kiev coup affect the situation of the war

Reporter Liao Qin

At present, two hot wars around the world are heating up: the smoke of war between the United States and Iran is rising, and the flames of war between Russia and Ukraine are raging.

Since July, Ukraine has launched a strong offensive, continuously launching large-scale drone attacks into the Russian hinterland while expanding its front line and launching intensive strikes on Russian ships in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. In just a few weeks, Russian refineries, military and transportation facilities, oil tankers, merchant ships, and others were successively attacked.

Is Kiev changing its approach as the conflict enters its fifth year? Is the trend of Russia and Ukraine's offensive and defensive forces undergoing a reversal?

How does Wu change tactics?

The fierce attack in Ukraine began with the "Influence Operation" scheduled on June 25th.

The operation lasted for 40 days and mainly launched long-range strikes against Russia through drones, attacking key logistics and energy facilities such as refineries and military factories within Russia's borders, systematically weakening Russia's military and economic potential.

In the past month, the intensity and scope of the 'Influence Action' have far exceeded external expectations.

One is the normalization of deep strikes. Ukrainian military drones have penetrated thousands of kilometers into Russian territory. On the 15th local time, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that in the past 24 hours, the Russian air defense forces have intercepted 558 Ukrainian drones and 8 guided aerial bombs.

The second is to target energy and logistics facilities. Since the beginning of 2026, Russian refineries have suffered nearly 200 attacks, an increase of 11 times year-on-year, which has led to fuel shortages and hindered export business in many parts of Russia.

The third is to open up a new front at sea. Since July 6th, the Ukrainian military has launched a "naval battle" in the Sea of Azov, attacking 116 Russian ships within 9 days, with a density believed to have surpassed the oil tanker exchanges during the Iran Iraq War, disrupting key shipping routes for Russian food and energy exports.

This' Influence Operation 'is seen as a surprise attack by Ukraine after adjusting its tactics.

Zhao Long, director and researcher of the Institute of International Strategy and Security at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, believes that the biggest change in Ukraine's military strategy after more than four years of conflict is the shift from offensive and defensive positions to asymmetric attrition warfare and psychological warfare.

In the early stages of the war, the Ukrainian army mainly relied on defensive positions and Western heavy equipment for local counterattacks. However, after several years of depletion, the Ukrainian side realized that they were still at a disadvantage in terms of military strength, industrial capability, firepower, and other aspects. It was difficult to change the situation solely through frontal attack and defense, so they turned to low-cost, high-frequency, and sustained drone long-range strikes to increase Russia's combat costs.

In fact, since the third year of the conflict in 2024, the situation has shifted from positional warfare, mobile warfare, and even brutal flesh grinding battles to unmanned aerial vehicle warfare, with drones being seen as "rule changers" on the battlefield.

In the ongoing confrontation with Russia, drones have been regarded as Ukraine's trump card.

Stefan Meister, the head of the Eurasian project at the German Council on Foreign Relations, revealed that Ukraine has made technological breakthroughs and significantly expanded the production scale of long-range drones.

In addition, Ukraine has mastered large-scale and precise swarm strike tactics. Some analysts suggest that the significant advantage of Ukrainian drones is essentially due to their maximum integration of Western military technology.

In Zhao Long's view, in addition to Western support, what is more important is that Ukraine has established an ecosystem for drone production and innovation, forming a closed loop of battlefield demand, enterprise research and development, rapid production, combat feedback, and upgrading.

Another analysis suggests that Ukraine has established a four-dimensional collaborative wartime innovation system consisting of "soldiers, startups, volunteers, and government", and new equipment can be deployed in just a few weeks from prototype to deployment.

How can Russia dismantle its strategy?

In the traditional military field, whether it is missiles or military strength, Russia is indeed superior to Ukraine, but in the field of drone warfare, Russia seems to be much inferior. As Ukrainian drones continue to invade, the outside world is questioning whether the shortcomings and loopholes of Russia's air defense system have been exposed.

Zhao Long stated that Russia's traditional air defense system was originally designed for aircraft and missiles, and is not suitable for dealing with multi-directional and saturation attack drones, which is also a new challenge faced by the world.

In fact, Russia's strategy is not static and is constantly being updated and adjusted.

Zhao Long pointed out that the Russian military has abandoned the large-scale mechanized advance in the early stages of the conflict, and turned to relying more on long-range firepower suppression, unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance guidance, and small-scale troop infiltration.

Although this strategy has a slow pace of advancement, it meets the needs of Russia's long-term attrition war, reduces casualties, and is more conducive to leveraging its industrial production and firepower reserve advantages.

In Zhao Long's view, Ukraine's "influence operation" has indeed achieved unexpected results, affecting Russia's strategic deployment and changing the pace and form of the conflict, but it does not mean that it can change the situation or even the direction of the conflict.

Because Russia has industrial restoration capabilities, a complete energy system, and significant strategic depth. For example, on the Donbass front, although the Russian military has made slow progress, the overall situation is still one of Russian attack and Ukrainian defense.

"The Russia-Ukraine conflict has entered into a systematic war of attrition." Zhao Long said that this determines that the two sides are engaged in a systematic competition, covering the country's industrial capacity, social resilience, psychological endurance, logistics system, wartime mobilization capacity, etc. The war algorithm is only one link in the entire system, not the whole, and the future form of war is not competition among individual platforms.

How did the situation evolve?

The Russia-Ukraine conflict, which was supposed to be able to be resolved quickly, has now been postponed for more than four years, more than one war, and has become the most brutal conflict between countries since World War II - the cumulative number of casualties on both sides is close to 1.8 million.

How long, when, and how the long-term consumption trend will last is unknown.

According to Xinhua News Agency, US President Trump said on the 14th local time that Russian President Putin was ready to reach an agreement as soon as possible to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But Putin's statement is exactly the opposite, vowing to launch a "reciprocal and several times more fierce counterattack" against Ukraine.

The outside world believes that there is still a trend of escalation in the conflict in the short term. Behind the recent simultaneous increase in offensive by Russia and Ukraine, there are already multiple considerations such as competing for the initiative on the battlefield and balancing domestic and foreign affairs. Looking ahead, Zhao Long believes that there are three directions worth paying attention to.

Firstly, will the deep strike be further upgraded? In the future, both sides may further expand their attack targets from energy facilities to critical infrastructure such as transportation hubs, ports, and airports. Ukrainian military expert Oleg Zhdanov pointed out that in addition to the struggle for frontline positions, the destruction of the opponent's logistics supply system has become the focus of the current confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. Whether it can effectively paralyze the opponent's logistics supply system may affect the trend of the war and even the negotiation process.

Secondly, who reaches the limit of resilience first? What truly determines the direction of a war is not a successful attack, but which side first struggles to maintain industrial production, troop replenishment, and social stability, thereby affecting the overall tactical and strategic deployment.

Thirdly, is the new round of conflict promoting talks or war? Continuous consumption may force both parties to consider negotiations more seriously, or may escalate the conflict due to mutual belief that 'the other party has suffered greater losses', resulting in significant uncertainty in the future. Zhao Long believes that the probability of it evolving into a full-scale war in the future is very low, and what needs to be vigilant is that local escalation may trigger misjudgment, thereby increasing the risk of losing control.