US, French Intelligence Helps Ukraine Plan Deep Strikes on Russia

Ukraine has shifted its long-range drone campaign against Russia’s energy industry from broad attacks on refineries to more targeted strikes on critical components that are hard to replace, according to Financial Times (FT) on Thursday.Ukrainian military planners, drone operators, and energy specialists told the FT that Kyiv’s goal is no longer simply to start fires at refineries or destroy storage tanks, but to keep plants offline for longer and make each strike more costly for Moscow.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.“The strategy was meticulously targeted and co-ordinated,” one Ukrainian deep-strike unit member told the FT.Ukrainian officials said intelligence provided by the US and France had helped map Russian air-defense deployments and identify routes that allowed drones to evade them and reach targets deep inside Russia.Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defense minister and chair of the Center for Defense Strategies, said US and French intelligence had improved target selection, helping Ukraine’s deep-strike drone teams “learn where to hit.”He said Ukrainian planners had built a detailed map of Russia’s energy grid, allowing them to identify critical nodes where disruption can shut down larger parts of the system, and target equipment that is hardest to replace.Engineers brief drone units before strikesTwo deep-strike drone operators told the FT that target selection is guided by detailed technical analysis by officials, taking into account logistics, flight paths, and broader operational priorities. Other Topics of Interest ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 29, 2026 War in Ukraine - Latest update, key takeaways and map from the Institute for the Study of War on July 29, 2026 Before missions, drone units receive briefings from energy engineers and industry experts on which components are indispensable to refinery operations and would take longest to replace.The engineers tell drone units to strike “these pipelines here, or this chimney, hit here in this space, or this part of the equipment connection, or this box, and so on,” one drone operator said.Russia and Ukraine inherited similar Soviet-designed energy systems, giving Ukrainian engineers a detailed understanding of many of the industrial processes, equipment layouts, and operational vulnerabilities inside Russian facilities.“Sadly we learn from Russians,” Zagorodnyuk said. “They are doing exactly the same to us here,” he added, referring to Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.Repeated strikes prevent repairsUkrainian drone units have begun repeatedly striking the same critical equipment before repairs are complete, preventing facilities from resuming operations, according to drone operatives and an FT analysis of satellite images.“We hit critical nodes over and over again before or shortly after they have been rebuilt,” Zagorodnyuk said. “Previously, it was a big problem. We were hitting something and it was later rebuilt.”President Volodymyr Zelensky said last weekend that he had instructed Ukraine’s newly appointed commander-in-chief and acting defense minister to expand the country’s deep-strike campaign.Yevhen Khmara, the incoming defense minister, said he had worked with the new top commander Mykhailo Drapatyi on plans to “move the war on to the aggressor’s territory as much as possible.”“Ukraine will continue to exert shock and technological pressure on Russia by all means,” Khmara said. “We must scale up what is already effective.”“Systemic warfare” targets Russia’s networksRobert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said refinery attacks form part of a broader campaign to dismantle the networks that sustain Russia’s war effort – from oil exports that finance the military to logistics routes supplying troops at the front.“The objective is clear: 1) to destroy the sources that finance Putin’s war [oil trade] and 2) [to destroy] the military-industrial complex that supplies the occupying army with weapons,” he said.The strategy reflects what military planners describe as “systemic warfare” – treating Russia’s energy infrastructure as an interconnected network rather than a collection of individual targets.“We think of Russia as a system,” Zagorodnyuk said. “Understanding that system allows you to identify the critical parts where the effect is much more substantial.”Brovdi said the campaign also depended on the “systematic elimination” of Russian air-defense, radar, and electronic warfare systems to open corridors for drones deep inside Russia.He said Russia’s European territory, as well as occupied areas of Ukraine, were now within range.“Eighty million people – roughly two-thirds of Russia’s population – live in the European part of the country, within the strike zone, which is no longer and will no longer be considered Russia’s safe rear area,” he said.Brovdi said his drone forces did not plan to ease up: “The escalation of strikes, up to the complete destruction of the enemy’s fuel and energy sector and military-industrial complex, is inevitable.” Kyiv Post is Ukraine’s first and oldest English news organization, reporting since 1995. 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