Ukraine's drones are hitting Russia, but this campaign could backfire

Ukraine has been firing drones hundreds of kilometres deep inside Russian territory almost every day since June.The attacks have hit oil refineries, other critical infrastructure and more recently, warehouses belonging to Russia's version of Amazon.Even Siberia is no longer out of reach; the long-range, sophisticated drones have travelled more than 2,000 kilometres to target energy facilities.Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his aim is to make ordinary Russians feel the pain of the war by crippling the country's economy and disrupting everyday life.But some analysts argue there is a risk this strategy could backfire, and give President Vladimir Putin an excuse to escalate fighting and galvanise public support for the war.Ukraine has become increasingly aggressive in attacking its neighbour in recent weeks.Kyiv carried out one of its deadliest strikes on Sunday night, killing at least 13 people, including a child. Russian authorities say they shot down 456 Ukrainian drones during the attack, but some got through and hit an oil refinery and a hostel in the city of Nizhnekamsk, more than 1,000km east of Moscow.Last week, seven people were killed on a busy beach in southern Russia when a Ukrainian drone was intercepted and crashed."It seems like Ukraine is in quite a precarious situation … this sort of a strategy is one of last resort, because Ukraine has its back against the wall," said Marina Miron from the Department of Defence studies at King's College London.Ukraine has attempted to justify the strikes by arguing they are a response to Russia's bombardments of civilian targets in its cities, which have also increased recently.If the goal is to put pressure on Russia's economy, the campaign has been working, said Charles Hecker, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London."It's been effective on a number of fronts, it continues to take the Russians by surprise and to remind them that their air defences are surprisingly weak," he said."The damage that Ukraine has done to Russian energy capacity is really quite significant; oil refining capacity in Russia is now down by about 20 per cent."Repeated strikes on oil facilities mean long queues at petrol stations have been a common sight around Russia this summer.Hecker said while there was no question Russia was under crushing economic pressure from the attacks on its energy infrastructure, predictions of the "impending collapse" in the Russian economy were "probably exaggerated".But Ukraine's assault on Russia's largest online marketplace, Wildberries — a company often compared to Amazon — is making the cost of the war harder for ordinary Russians to ignore.'People could be saying, Putin was right all along'More than 20 Wildberries warehouses have been hit by Ukraine, which says the company is a legitimate wartime target because it sells military equipment.The retail giant's reach in Russia is huge. It is used by 79 million people each month and accounts for around 2 per cent of the country's GDP.John Lough, the head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, said there was a chance this strategy could backfire."It is a real possibility that a section of the Wildberries consumer base will say, yeah, we should be fighting this war more aggressively," he said."They could also say we shouldn't have allowed this to happen because the Ukrainians did this to us with the support of their Western partners and we understand what Putin's saying, that we are at war with the so-called collective West."Even inside Ukraine, the long-range drone strategy has its critics. Some of the country's opposition MPs are questioning whether it is worth the risk.They argue Ukraine's drone strikes in Russia are provoking Moscow to retaliate with a more destructive response.Miron warned the campaign could "backfire" on Zelenskyy and potentially rally more Russians behind Putin."One portion of the [Russian] population might be dissatisfied and afraid [because of the attacks], the other portion of the population, which was neutral or perhaps against the war, might now be supporting the war," she said."People could be saying, Putin was right all along, they're attacking Wildberries — it's a civilian target, so this can be perfectly used by the Russian government to convince the population of the righteous cause of the war."As Ukraine has taken the war deeper into Russia, Moscow's response has been swift. It's targeted critical infrastructure like the Odesa Port, which has been struck repeatedly, suspending vital shipping and threatening one of Ukraine's economic lifelines.Associate professor and senior research fellow in defence and strategic studies at Perth's Edith Cowan University, Alexey Muraviev, told ABC News Radio that Russia's strikes were causing massive problems in Ukraine."Russia are systematically destroying petrol stations, certainly in Ukraine's east, which also causes enormous problems with people refuelling, and they are targeting bridges and railway systems," he said."So Ukraine is actually [receiving] more damage in addition to now growing international criticism while Russian civilian casualties are actually increasing."While Russia was attacking Ukraine's cities and hitting civilian infrastructure like apartment buildings long before Kyiv's latest campaign, things have escalated lately.Earlier this month, the United Nations said there had been a "disturbing escalation" in civilians deaths, with hundreds killed and thousands injured in Ukraine this summer.Kyiv is also grappling with a critical shortage of interceptor missies."A few days ago, Putin hurled buckets of ballistic missiles at Kyiv and Ukraine wasn't able to shoot them down," Hecker said."That's when Ukraine suffered a very large spike in civilian casualties."Ukraine said it had received only a third of the air defences from its allies this year, compared to the same period last year."That situation is really quite desperate," Hecker said.Analysts say Ukraine's increasing drone strikes could be an attempt to pressure Putin back to the negotiating table in a bid to end the war. So far, there is little indication of that happening.Zelenskyy's strategy of making Russians feel the war more is working. What's less clear, is whether the pain his own people are feeling will pay off in any way.