Ukraine's New BRUTAL Strategy Will Make Life Impossible for ALL Russians

0:00 For the first three years of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukraine focused on defense. It had to. Russia’s marauding forces would have taken more territory than they already had were it not for Ukraine’s brave defenders. However, defense alone isn’t enough to win a war. Ukraine knows this. That’s why 2025 has seen it introduce a brutal new strategy designed to make Russians miserable until they eventually break. Ukraine is making life in Russia a nightmare for everyday civilians, and this is just the start of a long-term plan designed to end Putin’s rule once and for all. To begin, it’s important to get something straight. By saying that Ukraine is aiming to make life hell for Russia’s people,

0:48 that doesn’t mean it’s about to start launching direct attacks against civilians. That’s a Putin tactic. And it’s one that Russia’s leader has been using to terrible effect throughout the war he started. According to the United Nations, the period between December 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025, saw Russia kill 968 civilians and injure 4,807 more. This represented a 37% increase over the same period the previous year. In June, Russia’s attacks against Ukrainian civilians intensified. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says that Putin’s much larger drone assaults on Ukraine’s cities led to 232 people being

1:36 killed and 1,343 being injured in that month alone. The head of the mission, Danielle Bell, outlined what Russia’s strategy is all about. “Civilians across Ukraine are facing levels of suffering we have not seen in over three years. The surge in long-range missile and drone strikes across the country has brought even more death and destruction to civilians far away from the frontline,” she said when revealing the figures. Ukraine could very easily follow Putin’s lead with its new strategy. It has plenty of long-range drones and missiles that it could use to inflict just as much damage as Putin is inflicting on Ukraine on Russia’s civilians. But that isn’t how Ukraine operates. It’s far more interested

2:23 in legitimate military targets ahead of wanton bloodshed, and it also doesn’t want to give Putin the opportunity to cast Ukraine as terrorists. Which leads back to Ukraine’s clever new strategy. If not direct attacks on civilians, just what is Ukraine doing to make life in Russia such a nightmare? The National Security Journal has the answer, courtesy of a reporter named Stephen Silver. On July 28, Silver wrote that Ukraine plans to make ordinary life impossible for the everyday Russian. It plans to bring the war that Putin started back home to Russia, not through the killing of civilians, but by systematically disrupting the lives of civilians to the point where it’s impossible for them to ignore the

3:09 war Putin is waging. Moscow is, and will continue to be, a key target of this disruption. However, Ukraine is hoping that it can pull off its new strategy all across Russia, making it clear to all Russian civilians that Putin’s war can affect them just as much as it affects Ukraine. Long-range drones lie at the heart of this strategy. Ukraine’s goal, which will be covered more later in the video, is to take a Russian population that has so far been relatively insulated from the Ukraine war and expose them to it. And through that exposure, Ukraine hopes it will be able to create such massive discontent inside Russia that Putin will be forced to rethink his invasion. Key to this new Ukrainian strategy is creating

3:57 travel problems for Russia’s people. That may seem like a strange approach. Travel issues would be a minor inconvenience, sure. But are they really enough to change the perception of Putin inside Russia? Potentially, and for a simple reason – Russia’s sheer size makes the ability to travel a necessity for the average Russian. And even for those Russians who don’t have to travel huge distances to see their friends or relatives in other oblasts, disruptions can be enough to cost them years of savings. Ukraine is creating these travel problems with its long-range drone strikes. Those drones, which primarily target Russian military and oil facilities, have the secondary objective of closing down the country’s

4:44 airports. Those closures are temporary. But they’re forced every time Russia’s air defenses have to respond to an incoming aerial threat. After all, Putin can’t risk the prospect of his own air defenses accidentally shooting down a commercial plane filled with Russian passengers. So, Russia is forced to make the difficult decision to close down air travel whenever Ukraine launches a drone strike. If there’s any doubt about the importance of this new aspect of Ukraine’s strategy, Novaya Gazeta wrote on July 14 that these airport closures are intentional and becoming more frequent. It says that Russian airports have been forced to close down 604 times since Putin started his war. Given that the war had waged for about three and a half

5:33 years, that would seem to give us an average of 172 airport closures per year. But that average doesn’t tell the full story. The reality is that 2025 has seen more of these closures than any other year of the war, accounting for 75% of them during the first six months of the year alone. Between 2022 and 2024, there were 149 airport shutdowns. That’s lower than the annual average mentioned earlier, showcasing that airports weren’t a focus for Ukraine for much of the war. The other 455 closures, representing 75% of the 604 total, have occurred in 2025. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a pattern that shows

6:20 us precisely what Ukraine is trying to achieve with its new strategy. The numbers keep on coming. The same Novaya Gazeta report also covers a period of severe aviation disruption that Ukraine forced on Russia between July 5 and July 7. Over the course of three days, Russia was forced to divert 88 flights thanks to Ukraine’s drones. A further 1,900 were delayed, with another 500 being cancelled. Novaya Gazetta estimates that the disruption affected 400,000 passengers, all of whom got a short and sharp taste of the fact that Putin’s war can cause them major problems. The Guardian puts some human faces on the disruption that Ukraine is causing. It spoke to Vladimir Shevchuk and his wife as they sat

7:09 stranded in Sheremetyevo Airport amidst their suitcases. The family was supposed to be on a flight to Turkey, where they would enjoy a long-awaited summer vacation. Instead, they were left in the airport for a day and a night as all flights were suspended. After sleeping on the cold concrete floor of the airport, they awoke to an announcement that their flight had been rescheduled. For the next week. “We saved up for this trip for a year,” Shevchuk told The Guardian. “Our hotel and car rental can’t be reimbursed, and we simply can’t reschedule.” Of course, this sort of inconvenience is minor when compared to the daily horrors faced by Ukraine’s citizens thanks to Putin’s war. However, trivial does not mean inconsequential. The Shevchuk family is just one of thousands who have been forced to

8:00 face these sorts of travel issues. And with each cancelled or delayed flight, thousands of dollars are being lost from the bank accounts of everyday Russians. Even if flights are being rescheduled, as was the case for the Shevchuk family, that doesn’t help when it comes to hotels, vehicles, and other things that have already been paid for. Ukraine’s new strategy allows it to hit Russia’s people in their pockets at a time when they’re already struggling with a toiling Russian economy. These people had some minor good news in July when Russia’s Central Bank announced it was cutting the country’s base interest rate by 2 points. But even that two-point cut means that Russians are dealing with 18% interest rates on any loans they wish to take out. Inflation is also rampant in Russia,

8:48 hitting 9.4% in June. Again, this was a decrease compared to the previous month, but it’s still a high rate of inflation. Plus, Russia has had three months in 2025 where inflation rose above 10%. These economic problems mean the everyday Russian’s ruble isn’t stretching as far as it used to. Losing more money thanks to disrupted travel is the last thing any of these civilians wants. And it’s not just Russia’s civilians that are feeling the monetary pinch of Ukraine’s new strategy. Russia’s airlines are losing millions of dollars as well. The previously mentioned disruption caused between July 5 and July 7 is estimated to have cost carriers around $254 million, says Kyiv Independent.. Each

9:36 cancelled flight, assuming the use of a Boeing 737-800, will cost a carrier up to $284,000 when accounting for fuel, crew costs, airport services, and the lost revenue forced on the carrier by losing its customers. Even a delayed flight comes with a heavy price tag – every four hours of delay costs a carrier up to $19,000. So, it’s not just Russia’s travelers that Ukraine is hurting with its new strategy. It’s the very airlines that make travel possible. And again, it’s all in service of Ukraine’s efforts to make life as uncomfortable as possible for Russia’s people in whatever ways it can, short of killing them. Perhaps the long-term goal might even be to force the bankruptcy of as many Russian airlines as possible, meaning everyday Russians not only

10:26 face delays, but also far fewer options when it comes to where and how they travel. And as if it couldn’t get any worse for Russia’s airlines, there’s a new problem on the horizon: Hacking. On July 28, The Guardian reported that a pro-Ukraine hacking group managed to conduct a cyberattack on the systems of Aeroflot, which is a Russian airline. While there aren’t yet many details known about the nature of the attack or how it happened, it is known that a group named Silent Crow has claimed responsibility. In a statement published by the group, Silent Crow revealed that it had worked alongside a Belarusian hacking team named Cyber Partisan, which has also been linked to pro-Ukrainian actions during the war. The results of the

11:12 hacking attack were much the same as what’s seen when Ukraine sends long-range drones into Russia. Aeroflot was forced to cancel 50 of its flights and delayed at least 10 others, according to Reuters and The Guardian. That means this single hack cost the airline millions of dollars. That isn’t pocket change for the airline. It’s a big dent in its financial health, and it’s the sort of problem that isn’t going away anytime soon. There’s a clear reason why. Taking this isolated hacking incident out of the equation, practically all of Russia’s recent spate of airport closures have come as a result of Ukraine launching deep strikes on Russian territory using its long-range drones. Those strikes aren’t targeting Russia’s airports directly. No bombs are dropping

11:59 on the tarmac or Russian jetliners going up in flames thanks to Ukraine’s drones. Instead, Ukraine is using its deep strikes to hit key Russian military targets that just so happen to be close to airports, which forces closures. It's a two birds, one stone approach. And it’s an approach that has only become more intense in 2025. Russia faces a massive deep strike dilemma as Ukraine has intensified its drone strikes. Toward the end of March, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that Russia’s energy sector alone has experienced $714 million of damage caused by Ukraine’s deep strikes between September 2024 and February 12, 2025. That number comes from an analysis of more than 100 satellite images showing

12:50 the before and after of key Russian energy sites. A single Ukrainian strike in Toropets also cost Russia between 30,000 and 160,000 tons of ammunition, the same outlet reports. That ammunition needs to be replaced, which costs Russia more money. Plus, its destruction means it can’t be shipped to the front lines. Pressure is relieved on Ukraine’s forces as a result, meaning the war will drag on even longer. And the longer the war drags on, the more Ukraine can use its deep strikes to do damage and, as a side effect, cause even more problems for Russia’s citizens. Putin’s war has trapped the Russian people in a vicious cycle. Another estimate, this time provided by The Kyiv Independent, suggests that Ukraine’s deep

13:37 strikes have cost Russia more than $10 billion between January and May of 2025. Ukraine is also exploiting Russia’s sheer size with these attacks. Putin can’t protect all 2.7 million square miles of Russia’s territory with his diminishing air defenses, United24 Media pointed out back in June. Key military targets are going to be hit. There’s not much that Russia can do about that fact. And even if Ukraine doesn’t score direct hits on those targets, every drone it sends into Russia carries with it the ability to force airport closures due to its mere presence. To make matters worse for Putin, it’s not like this deep-strike strategy is going to come to an end any time soon. Back in November, Ukrainian President

14:24 Volodymyr Zelenskyy set a target for Ukraine to produce 30,000 long-range drones in 2025. That sheer scale of production will mean that Ukraine has about 2,500 drones per month that it can use to carry on its deep strikes. Ukraine also announced that it has produced a drone that’s capable of traveling up to 1,864 miles back in March, which opens up more opportunities to strike deeper into Russia and cause even more airport closures. Ukraine is even working alongside its partners to increase its deep strike capacity. On June 23, The Guardian reported that Ukraine and the U.K. have sealed a deal that will see the two countries cooperate on the production of more long-range drones Ukraine can use to hurt Russia. Mentioned during the introduction to this

15:14 video was that what Ukraine is doing now is just the start. This is what that means. Ukraine has identified deep strikes as the key to creating a nightmare for Russia’s people. As it focuses on building more long-range drones than ever before, those types of strikes will become even more common. With each strike comes more airport closures, which takes money out of the pockets of both everyday Russians and the airlines that are serving them. Round and round the cycle goes, causing more pain every single time. So, how is Russia responding to all of this? It can’t respond with more air defenses. Those are already stretched so thin that Putin is having to replace systems he’d set up in Asia to expand his influence on that continent with decoys so he can bring those systems back to Russia,

16:04 as United24 reported back in May. And more air defenses wouldn’t help anyway. It’s those systems rattling off their rounds and missiles, along with Ukraine’s drones, that are causing so many airport closures in the first place. No, Putin’s response is much simpler: He’s shutting down mobile internet for thousands of people at a time. On July 28, The New York Times reported that Russian authorities have started to shut down mobile internet networks, seemingly at random and often for hours at a time, to respond to Ukraine’s ever-present drone threat. There is a logic behind these shutdowns. According to The New York Times, Ukraine’s drones can use the mobile connections provided to these phones to help them navigate to their targets. Shut down the connections, the drones might be stopped.

16:55 But that only plays into Ukraine’s hands once remembering that its new strategy is all about wreaking havoc on the everyday Russian. As with the airport closures, every hours-long loss of a mobile internet connection serves as a reminder to Russia’s people that their leader has forced their country into a war that is now having an impact on their daily lives. One could even argue that the internet shutdowns are even more effective than the airport closures. Flight cancellations and delays might impact several thousand people at a time. Russia’s mobile internet response could affect millions. That’s especially the case when considering that mobile phones are often the only way that the average Russian can get access to the internet, The National Security Journal adds. So, it’s not

17:42 like most Russians can just jump on a laptop and start browsing again. Once a mobile connection is lost, the average Russian has no internet until some unseen authority decides to restore it. All of this leads back to something touched on earlier in the video: Ukraine’s goals with its new strategy. It’s already evident that Ukraine hopes to turn the everyday Russian’s life into such an inconvenient nightmare that it’s impossible for them to ignore the reality that there is a brutal war ongoing far out of their collective sight. That’s the first goal. Every closed airport and lost mobile internet connection is a metaphorical slap to the face of every Russian who is affected. These reminders ensure that the Ukraine war can’t remain invisible to these people. It's happening.

18:30 It’s affecting them. And Ukraine hopes that enough of these inconveniences will be enough to make them angry. In an ideal world, that anger would turn into a rebellion against Putin and his invasion. However, that seems unlikely. The Guardian suggests that Zelenskyy has long abandoned any hope he once had that he could persuade the average Russian to oppose the war. That doesn’t mean that opposition doesn’t exist in Russia. In February, The Journal of Democracy reported on a November 2024 survey that found that 57% of Russians favored a ceasefire in the Ukraine war versus the 35% who backed continued fighting. That’s a sign that whatever appetite there was for Putin’s invasion is starting to wane. But Zelenskyy can’t rely on that decreased appetite to turn the overall tide of public

19:19 sentiment against Putin to the point where Russia’s leader might be deposed. But that doesn’t mean that Zelenskyy has given up hope of getting Putin out of the Russian seat of power. If he can’t convince Russia’s people to do the job, he may be able to make it happen as a result of the sheer loss of money Ukraine’s deep strike strategy is causing for Russia. Everyday Russians are losing thousands of dollars thanks to Ukraine’s new approach. Its businesses, and Putin himself, are losing hundreds of millions, if not billions, during a time when Russia’s economy is already struggling. That’s the main goal. Ukraine hopes it can use its new strategy to inflict such a high monetary cost on Russia that Putin will be forced to end his war. And if that war ends without Putin

20:06 achieving his goal of absorbing Ukraine into Russia, Putin becomes vulnerable to anybody who wishes to take his place. And it’s not just deep strikes that are causing problems for Putin and his people. Ukraine just tore out Russia’s jugular and is bleeding its oil arteries dry, causing yet more issues for Putin, his military, and his people. Learn more by watching our video, and remember to subscribe to The Military Show for more coverage of the latest tactics Ukraine is using to counter Russian aggression.