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Ukraine’s decision to launch a drone attack into Russia as the next phase of peace negotiations involving delegations from Washington and Kyiv began is a clear demonstration that its military capacity has not yet been significantly dented by Donald Trump’s decision to withhold military intelligence last week.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked with 337 drones, 91 of which were aimed at Moscow and the surrounding region. Three people were reported to have been killed, all four of the Russian capital’s airports had to be closed, and local air defences were not entirely effective in repelling the assault.
A handful of apartment buildings were visibly damaged, though not too seriously. Moscow’s regional governor said that two people had been killed at a car park near a meat processing plant in Domodedovo, five miles from an airport. Fragments of a drone hit the ground, setting fire to cars shortly after 5am, Andrei Vorobyov wrote on his Telegram channel. Later, it was reported that a third man had died.
Striking at civilian targets is never attractive, though the images were not dissimilar to those of Ukrainian cities hit nightly by Russian bombing over the past three years. Russia has also been increasing the scale of its drone attacks recently – on Monday it launched 126 Shahed drones, as well as other, decoy drones, into Ukraine, as well as a ballistic missile.
Though it is not clear what targeting information Ukraine is working with now, there have been assurances by the French and British that they will continue to supply reconnaissance data gleaned from satellites and air- and ground-based surveillance, as well as open-source data. Moscow’s airports, for example, cannot move and it is easy to force their closure with simply the threat of a drone attack.
Tuesday night’s attacks are a reminder of how far Ukraine’s long-range drone capability (mostly manufactured indigenously) has developed, but is also a warning to Moscow that the loss of US intelligence – principally targeting information – is not likely to precipitate a battlefield collapse as diplomatic talks begin.
Until Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House, there had been no peace negotiations since spring 2022. That has been changed by the US president’s willingness to talk to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and lean on Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy – but it is anything but clear that Kyiv will choose this moment to give in.
Critically, the revised military balance, without US intelligence, has yet to be established. On Thursday last week, a day after the US confirmed its decision, Russia launched an effort, with the help of North Korean troops, to recapture the remainder of the Kursk pocket held by Ukraine. It has forced the defenders back by between four and eight miles (6km and 12km) and into the outskirts of Sudhza, a village that Ukraine has occupied since August.
Ukraine’s position in the salient has deteriorated markedly, but it may well be a function of a concentrated Russian attack, rather than the beginnings of a rout caused by an absence of targeting data. The return of North Korean soldiers to the frontline, after a period in which they were reconstituted after taking heavy casualties, and reports of a heavy use of Russian drones both point to a determined offensive.
There were reports of some totemic US weapons systems – such as the radar jammers on Ukraine’s small fleet of F-16s jets – becoming non-functional. But the loss of capability in one area may be more than offset by gains elsewhere: the growing sophistication of Ukrainian jamming means that Russian glide bombs, once considered a wonder weapon, are increasingly inaccurate.
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A more open question is whether halting US military aid will significantly degrade the position of the Ukrainians over time, but if the diplomatic track does not bear fruit, experts believe Russia and Ukraine can carry on fighting at similar levels of intensity through the rest of 2025. Meanwhile, the battles of the moment, at least, are likely to be coloured heavily by the political discussions.
Ukraine’s attack into Russia is also designed to reinforce its proposal for an air truce – itself a counter to Trump’s argument that Kyiv does not want peace. In reality, it is Ukraine that would gain the most from halting long-range missile and drone attacks, giving it a chance to rebuild its partly destroyed energy networks. So by striking into Russia, it can at least argue that Moscow would have something to gain.
The problem is that military escalation is not the most obvious route to peace.
