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Ukraine has attacked targets inside Russian territory.
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Many attacks have focused on air bases or energy infrastructure.
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Experts told BI that Ukraine hopes to inflict strategic, economic, and psychological damage on Russia.
In late July, Ukraine said it had been struck by Russia Tu-22M3 supersonic bomber at the Olenya air base in Murmansk, a record of 1,100 miles in Russian territory.
While the news made headlines, it is not the first time that Ukraine has reportedly targeted a site inside Russia.
In June, the defense intelligence agency GUR said Ukrainian forces had shot down a Russian Su-57 fighter jet that was at an airfield in Russia’s southern Astrakhan region, about 360 miles from the front line.
And in May, Ukraine’s Security Service said a long-range Ukrainian drone struck a Gazprom oil refinery about 930 miles away in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan.
Ukraine currently does not have permission to use long-range guided weapons such as ATACMS to hit these targets in Russia.
But it uses low-cost domestically produced drones for long-range attacks, Mark Cancian, Senior Advisor for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI.
“It was packed with explosives and flown to Russia,” Cancian said.
While targeting targets far from the front lines may seem like Ukraine is spread thin, the strike has three main advantages, experts told BI.
Physical and economic damage
Attacks on military-related sites, such as air bases or defense industrial facilities, aim to disable or temporarily disable assets that Russia is using to facilitate its war against Ukraine.
And even small attacks can have a big impact.
In the case of the Olenya air base attack, which Ukraine later said had destroyed two Tu-22M3 bombers, Justin Bronk, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said it would have “a measurable effect.”
“Russia’s active fleet is not large and even a temporary loss of two aircraft for missile launches against Ukraine will have a measurable effect,” he said.
The attack on the oil refinery was also aimed at “damaging Moscow’s pocketbook,” John Hardie, Deputy Director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told BI.
Although, he added, what he did “is debatable.”
Russia’s oil revenue in April more than doubled annuallyBloomberg previously reported, highlighting the Kremlin’s success in diversionary operations.
Reuters reported in April that Russia also appears to be able to quickly repair some of the key refining facilities damaged by the Ukrainian attack, reducing the impact capacity to approximately 10% from nearly 14% at the end of March, according to the calculations of the news agency.
Putting pressure on Russian air defenses
Ukraine also hopes to “surround Russian air defenses” with “massive” drone strikes, Hardie said, adding that it could be “difficult for air defense systems to detect and shoot down UAVs that are small in size or flying on the ground.”
“Russia has adapted its air defense posture after the previous drone attacks and it is reported that it has set up a mobile counter-UAS (unmanned aircraft system) team. But Russia is a vast country, so defending anywhere is difficult,” he said.
Moscow also started “well after Ukraine in developing countermeasures for long-range UAV threats,” Hardie added, and “hasn’t set up anything like a cheap, distributed sensor system that Ukraine uses to detect Shahed UAVs.”
As a result, the attack presented Russia with a “serious dilemma,” Bronk said.
Given the vastness of Russia’s territory and the number of potential targets that Ukraine can target, Moscow “is forced to protect it by taking air defense systems away from front-line areas; or leave (domestic targets) defenseless causing consistent interference damage,” he said.
Psychological warfare
The Ukrainian offensive deep inside Russian territory also presents the Kremlin with a serious political problem – ordinary Russians are starting to realize that “the country cannot defend its own airspace,” Bronk said.
Cancian agreed, saying the “psychological” impact of the attack was significant. One of Ukraine’s main goals is “military embarrassment and popular anxiety,” he said.
It showed the Russians that “there is a price for invading Ukraine,” he added.
Read the original article on Business Insider
