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The Russian-Ukrainian drone war entered an entirely new phase this summer. Ukrainians seized the initiative and caught the Kremlin off guard with exceptionally effective attacks on refineries, major Wildberries warehouses in large Russian cities and military logistics in south-eastern Ukraine — attacks it has been unable to counter for several weeks.

On Friday (31 July), major fires were reported in Volgograd — at a Lukoil refinery and a Wildberries warehouse — and in Tatarstan, at Wildberries.

Ukraine’s offensive campaign has caused Russia’s worst fuel crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union and forced it to impose a series of restrictions. The Russian government, for example, extended the ban on petrol exports by six months, until 31 January 2027, and the ban on diesel exports until the end of the summer.

What had historically been Russia’s advantage — its size — has now proved to be a major weakness. As we discuss in this update with Czech military expert Lukáš Visingr, the successful campaign of summer 2026 rests primarily on three types of drone and, above all, on a sophisticated strategy that has overcome Russian air defences.

The cheap and exceptionally effective FP-1 drone. This week’s attack in Ryazan, involving Firepoint’s FP-1 kamikaze drone, is a textbook example.

The company itself claimed responsibility for the mass drone attack on both the refinery and the Wildberries warehouse. Footage released by the company shows the specific type of drone, whose design somewhat resembles an aircraft.

Ryazan pic.twitter.com/yRX3bsNvXy
— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) July 29, 2026

It is a relatively small and very cheap drone, weighing between 60 and 120 kg, with an estimated price of around $55,000 — a negligible sum compared with the damage it inflicts on Russia.

This is what the burning Wildberries warehouse looked like in a city around 900 km from the Ukrainian border.

“FP-1 uses an aerodynamic configuration that is fairly common among unmanned aircraft — it has a fuselage pod and two tail booms connected by a horizontal stabiliser. The well-known Turkish Bayraktar combat drones, for instance, use a similar basic design,” Visingr said.

The Ryazan oil refinery was forced to suspend production as a result of the attacks, which, according to Reuters, could last for as long as two weeks. It is one of the Russian Federation’s largest oil-processing facilities.

Ukraine’s aim is for repairs to take as long as possible and for the damage to Russia’s war budget to be as great as possible.

Ukrainians do not strike at random, but at the most sensitive targets. An even bolder attack in early July took place as far as 2,500 km from the Ukrainian border, in Omsk. The drones had to cross the Urals and weave their way into Siberia, where they put a huge refinery processing around 10 percent of Russia’s oil out of operation.

Here, too, the attackers were highly precise and struck a specific unit — the ELOU-AVT-11 primary oil-processing unit, with an annual processing capacity of 8.4 million tonnes. Gazpromneft-ONPZ in Omsk is Russia’s largest refinery, capable of processing up to 22 million tonnes of oil a year.

As the Financial Times explained in its analysis, drone units receive instructions before missions from energy engineers and other experts about which components are essential to a refinery’s operation and which would take the longest to replace. “Engineers and specialists give the drone units instructions to hit ‘these pipes here, or this chimney here in this area, or this part of the equipment connection, or this cabinet, and so on’,” a drone operator told the British newspaper.

Their aim is to repeat attacks on critical parts of the facility before they can be repaired, thereby extending the period for which they remain out of operation.

“A large part of the equipment used in Russian refineries comes from the West, making it extremely difficult for Russia to replace. While microchips can be smuggled through third countries in a shoebox, a refinery’s fractionation or distillation column cannot be imported that way. China can manufacture some parts, but that takes a year, and installation takes another year. That is also why some Russian refineries have already had to halt operations completely,” Visingr said.

For this operation, Ukrainians again deployed the FP-1, but in its upgraded FP-1(ER) Extended Range version, with a range greater than the original 1,600 km. According to Denys Shtilerman, Fire Point’s chief designer and co-owner, this version can reach distances of up to 3,400 km.

3400
— Denys Shtilierman (@DenShtilierman) July 6, 2026

Air defences were unable to cope with the upgraded Ukrainian drone here either.

❗️🇺🇦Ukrainian modernized kamikaze drone FP-1 maneuvers before approaching the target at the 🇷🇺Omsk Oil Refinery pic.twitter.com/6wxQAFAD5T
— 🪖MilitaryNewsUA🇺🇦 (@front_ukrainian) July 6, 2026

How are they able to get through Russian air defences so easily? It is highly likely that, because of evasive manoeuvres, the FP-1 attack drones actually flew farther than the 2,500 km mentioned on their way to Omsk.

As Visingr explained, Russia’s vast size is now becoming a curse.

“Russia simply cannot cover 100 percent of its territory with air-defence systems. This creates gaps and blind spots in coverage through which drones can weave their way,” Visingr said, noting that relatively little attention is paid to this phenomenon. Launching the drones themselves is only the very final step.

“It is preceded by extensive planning and intelligence work. Every such strike is based on detailed intelligence. Ukrainians do not obtain it only themselves; they also receive it from Western partners. Western reconnaissance aircraft and satellites can track the positions of Russian air defences in real time,” Visingr said.

According to the Financial Times, particularly useful is the intelligence Ukrainians receive from US and French intelligence services. It is used to plan routes for drones that successfully penetrate deep into Russian territory.

According to Visingr, it is a mistake to draw a circle in one’s mind around a Russian air-defence system representing its maximum range and assume that nothing can enter that space.

“But range circles are not force fields. The fact that an S-300 system has a stated range of, for example, 75 km does not m...

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