Drone attacks cause disquiet in Russia, but will they harm Putin’s regime?

The two drone strikes on Moscow business district towers earlier this week did little serious damage but the symbolic impact was of a different order. This is not least because they hit the heart of the Russian capital and were part of a pattern of armed drone attacks affecting government and military targets spread across much of southwest Russia.

The strikes have been few compared with the many hundreds of drones and missiles fired from Russia into Ukraine, and casualties were minimal. In Ukraine, over 9,000 civilians have been killed and 16,646 injured, with the UN making it clear that “the actual figures are considerably higher”.

Where the recent Ukrainian attacks into Russia may be significant, though, is if they make the position of the Putin regime more difficult. That, in turn, relates to wider developments in the conflict.

To be specific, within a month of the start of the conflict in February last year, a violent stalemate had evolved. Ukraine could be sure of increased NATO support if Russian forces made substantial gains sufficient to threaten the stability of the Kyiv government, but Russia could always fall back on the threat of weapons of mass destruction if it faced a war on its own territory.

This had been the position until June of this year, when the long-planned Ukrainian offensive started, intended to put sufficient pressure on Moscow to accept a negotiated settlement on terms favourable to Kyiv.

As of the start of August, this offensive has focused on extending Ukrainian control of territory through the Russian-controlled strip of land from Crimea in the south to the northern end of the Luhansk oblast. Three loosely linked offensives each aim to do this: in the east, close to the town of Luhansk; in the southeast towards the coast at Mariupol; and further to the south towards Berdiansk.

The overall aim is to isolate Crimea from land routes to Russia, making it far more difficult for the Kremlin to maintain control of the region. There are three routes from Crimea to Russia, each incorporating road and rail links. One of these links, the Kerch Bridge, was only built in the past five years. This bridge has proved vulnerable to Ukrainian attack, and there have also been recent attacks on a second link, the railway bridge at Chonhar.

If Ukraine could force a land corridor directly from Ukrainian territory through to the Sea of Azov, which is bordered by Crimea, Ukraine and Russia, that would be far more serious for Putin than the damage to the two bridges, potentially changing the whole balance of the conflict, with Russian supplies to Crimea severely hindered.

The attacks are intended to show that major military centres in Russia can and will be targeted, striking at the idea of a hugely powerful military machine

In practice, what has happened is that the extensive Russian defences built in the past nine months, together with its massive artillery capability, have resulted in slow progress and heavy losses for the Ukrainian armed forces, even though they had been substantially retrained and re-equipped by NATO support. This has become sufficiently problematic for Ukraine military commanders to return more to their own style of infantry operations while using modern NATO weapons and equipment.

For now, the stalemate continues, but both Ukraine and Russia are evolving new approaches. For Ukraine the focus has been on armed drones, increasing their use and often flying several hundred kilometres in the process to hit more distant targets. One of the Moscow attacks hit a building that housed offices of a ministry responsible for Russia’s military-industrial complex. Another struck a major military HQ where officers oversee and manage Ukrainian operations.

Despite the fact that none of this compares with the sheer number of drones fired at Ukraine, the attacks are intended to show that major military centres in Russia can and will be targeted, striking at the idea of a hugely powerful military machine. Moreover, the Ukraine government is making a concerted effort to acquire much longer-range armed drones, able to hit targets in Russia close to 1,000km away.

As for Russia, in addition to a rigorous process of defence against Ukrainian Army attacks, two other shifts are noticeable.

One is the increased effort to hinder exports of Ukrainian grain, just as the 2023 harvest is under way. This involves repeated attacks on Odessa and other grain-exporting ports, creating a blockade and affecting grain prices well beyond Ukraine. However, this strategy faces the prospect of a united front within the EU putting pressure on Putin on humanitarian grounds.

The other is expanding Russian influence across the Global South, especially in parts of Africa and South Asia where sympathy towards Russia and suspicion of NATO go hand in hand.

Overall, the balance of force is such that a long-term stalemate still seems likely, the one issue being whether the Ukrainian attacks deep into Russia will result in such a loss of support for Putin that a change of policy becomes essential. There is little sign of that at present. Indeed, Anna Matveeva of King’s College London argues that:

“…the recent attacks on Russian territory have galvanised this idea of a ‘defensive war’ among many ordinary people. They have exposed a degree of latent patriotism that may not already have been on display among those who had their doubts about invading Ukraine. This shows that the war has activated social forces in Russia – though it is yet not clear where this activism will lead.

“Russian society, after its initial ambivalence, is becoming more supportive. The process of turning an unpopular campaign into a ‘People’s War’ appears to have begun.”

This is helped by Putin’s insistence since the earliest days of the conflict that the Ukraine occupation was a defensive war against an expansionist NATO. Facing a Ukraine armed with some of NATO’s most modern weapons and with thousands of troops trained in NATO countries, it is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, a thoroughly unwelcome element of the conflict with which Western politicians must now contend.