KYIV—News of Russia’s deadliest attack on Ukraine so far this year came to us less than an hour after we had left the Ukrainian capital, after having spent almost a week in the country. Overnight on Tuesday, Russian forces launched hundreds of missiles and drones on several Ukrainian cities, killing nearly two dozen people, including children, and injuring many more. In news reports on Wednesday, we saw damage in the same cities, and on some of the same streets, that we had visited days earlier, in what was our third trip to Ukraine since late February.
These trips provide important context for the latest set of attacks and for the road ahead. We saw ample indications, if not clear proof, of a trend toward growing Ukrainian strength and emerging Russian vulnerabilities in the fifth year of Putin’s hare-brained “special military operation.” Our latest trip started in Odesa, where we attended the Black Sea Security Forum, along with scores of distinguished Americans and Europeans, and it ended in Kyiv for the Architecture of Security Forum 2026.
The mood in both cities was wary but quietly buoyant. Wary because the Kremlin has greatly increased its production of ballistic and other missiles, as well as drones, and has been unleashing them in large numbers on Ukraine’s civilians, in particular in Kyiv, Odesa, and Dnipro. We visited civilian sites that Russian attacks had devastated as part of an ongoing campaign that the Kremlin alleges targets only strategic and military sites. In Odesa, we witnessed the wreckage at the city’s oldest Jewish cemetery damaged by a Russian attack for the third time. In Kyiv, we walked through the charred remnants of a commercial shopping mall and commercial district, burned down in the massive May 24 attack on Kyiv.
Recent damage from a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 1, 2026. (Shelby Magid)
Russia’s attacks this week add to the ongoing destruction. With US Patriot batteries and interceptor missiles dedicated to the war in Iran, Ukraine’s people are largely defenseless against Moscow’s ballistic missiles. Following the latest attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that in one night, Russia launched 656 attack drones and seventy-three missiles of various types—ballistic, cruise, and anti-ship. He called for European anti–ballistic missile production, and he noted that the United States continuing its supply of missiles for Patriot systems is absolutely necessary.
The missile threat and the huge number of drones drove 41,000 people in Kyiv alone to the metro for shelter overnight. On Wednesday, we heard from Ukrainians, including those sleeping in bathrooms, hallways, and the metro, that it was one of the most frightening nights of the war, if not the most awful, for them.
Russia’s recent attacks have produced suffering but not despair, because developments on the battlefield since the start of the year have proved increasingly favorable to Ukraine. In 2025, Russia ground out small gains, albeit at the high price of around 30,000 casualties per month, toward Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of conquering the entirety of the Donbas region. In the first two months of this year, the small Russian gains became smaller, and the casualties grew greater. Since then, these trends have accelerated to the point where Ukraine is now taking back slightly more land than Russia is conquering. And Russian casualties in April topped 35,000. Moscow has now reached the point where it is not recruiting enough new soldiers to replace its casualties. All of this is well understood not just by soldiers and officials, but also by the Ukrainian people.
Ukrainians show resilience in the face of ongoing Russian attacks on June 1, 2026. (Shelby Magid)
More important still are the innovations in military weapons and systems that Ukraine is putting on the battlefield each day. A year ago, many military observers posited that Moscow’s inarguable advantage in weapons production would enable it to build a drone force that would overwhelm Ukraine. Now we see that Ukraine—because of its unique system that directly connects its engineers to its soldiers, allowing new innovations to be rapidly deployed—is able to innovate constantly, giving it a qualitative edge. Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to produce millions of drones yearly with small, decentralized facilities. In our recent trips to Ukraine, we saw the production and test sites of this remarkable system in action. Numerous Western security officials, including US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, have marveled at Ukraine’s prowess in this area and argued that the United States should develop a similar system. Already, Ukrainian weapons and expertise are being used by the United States and its Gulf partners to defend against Iranian missile and drone attacks in the Middle East. This is an advantage for Ukraine, as Gulf state purchases of Ukrainian defense products will mean more funds, with which Kyiv can ramp up its own production of drones to use against Russian forces.
The impact of Ukraine’s drone and air defense systems (against low- and mid-altitude missiles and drones) explains Russia’s growing casualty rates and diminishing territorial gains. But it also points to two looming dangers with strategic implications. The first is the ever more lethal nature of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian hydrocarbon facilities and munitions plants. Ukrainian drones, with a growing payload, can now hit targets over a thousand miles from Ukraine’s border. These strikes have now reduced Russian oil refining production to 4.69 million barrels per day, its lowest level since 2009. This affects the availability of oil for Moscow’s military and adds pressure to its doddering economy.
Earlier today, Ukraine’s long-range drone capability led to a fiery display in St. Petersburg, with Ukraine hitting energy and military sites just hours before the opening of Putin’s hometown’s major annual economic forum, in what is surely an embarrassment for the Kremlin.
The second danger relates to Moscow’s greatest logistical vulnerability in the war: supplying its troops and occupation authorities in Crimea and mainland southern Ukraine. The most efficient way for Russia to do that is by rail and highway on the land bridge from Donbas southeast to the peninsula. Cutting that land bridge would make the supplying of Crimea exorbitantly expensive. It would also force Russia to withdraw at least some of its troops from mainland southwest Ukraine—from the western outskirts of Kherson, certainly, and perhaps from Zaporizhzhia, too. Over the past month, Ukrainian drones have achieved air superiority over the land bridge, and Russian rail and road supplies have dropped substantially. Oil is now rationed in Crimea.
Were Ukraine to shut down the land-bridge supply route completely, Crimea would be dependent on the Kerch Bridge and maritime shipping for its necessities. Both are sitting ducks. The crisis this would produce in Crimea would send tremors all the way to Moscow, widening the fissures in the Putin regime that have appeared in recent months.