r/EUnews

Ukraine is striking Russian energy infrastructure at an unprecedented rate, according to an FT data analysis showing that Kyiv’s intensified drone campaign is spurring Russia’s worst fuel crisis in decades.

The number of successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian refineries reached an all-time monthly record of 16 in May, data from Rochan Consulting, a Polish analytical group monitoring the war, shows.

Since the beginning of 2026, Russian refineries have been hit at least 194 times, an 11-fold increase from the same period the previous year.

Kyiv and Moscow have launched record volumes of drone and missile attacks this year as long-range warfare between the two countries has intensified to its highest level since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Russia’s defence ministry says it is intercepting the vast majority of incoming Ukrainian attack drones. However, the sheer rise in frequency and quantity of projectiles has resulted in a growing number of hits on strategic energy facilities, strike and interception data show.

The campaign on Russian energy infrastructure has brought Vladimir Putin’s war closer to home than ever and forced more than half of the country’s regions to impose strict limits on fuel sales, while residents have been queueing for hours at petrol stations.

Among other attacks, in June Ukraine hit Moscow’s sole oil refinery several times, sparking huge fires that sent clouds of smoke billowing over the capital, which has not been spared from petrol shortages.

Analysts attribute the growing success of Ukraine’s drone campaign to its ability to significantly increase production, as well as improved management.

American intelligence assistance has also played a role, aiding Kyiv in charting the best paths for its drones and helping to skirt air defences, senior Ukrainian officials told the FT.

“Ukraine has had a technological breakthrough, which allowed them to produce more long-range drones and increase overall mass production,” said Stefan Meister, the head of the Eurasia programme at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Official figures published by the Russian defence ministry show that at least 63,933 of Kyiv’s drones were intercepted over Russia and occupied Ukrainian territories in the first six months of 2026.

Half of all claimed interceptions took place in the past two months, when Russia reported downing 14,195 drones in May and 17,832 in June. By comparison, the monthly totals for January and February did not exceed 6,000, according to the data.

The findings suggest that the intensification of Kyiv’s aerial campaign is putting Russia’s air defences under unprecedented strain, making it harder for Moscow to defend the critical energy and military assets that support its war machine.

The Ukrainian strikes have also destroyed the Kremlin’s carefully maintained illusion that normal life in Russia has carried on during the war, said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow defence think-tank.

“At a fundamental level, we can see Putin has made another fatal strategic error in this war, thinking for some reason that time was only on his side. He couldn’t get Ukraine to capitulate, but he gave them enough time to develop mass production of ‘deep strikes’,” Pukhov said.

Russia will have to spend considerable resources on improving its air defences and may struggle to produce enough systems and interceptors, Pukhov added.

Kyiv is increasingly able to strike at longer distances and to attack the same target with more drones, wearing down Russian defences. The push has been helped by the appointment of a new digital technology minister in January.

“Ukraine is not simply conducting more strikes than it did a year ago. The campaign has evolved from a relatively narrow effort against oil infrastructure into a broader strategic interdiction campaign aimed at degrading Russia’s energy, logistics, industrial and export systems simultaneously,” said Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting.

The intensification comes as Volodymyr Zelenskyy signalled that his forces would make a concerted push this summer to try to compel his Russian counterpart to end his years-long war of aggression.

The Ukrainian leader said last week that Kyiv was embarking on “a 40-day influence operation” to be carried out by its long-range strike units.

However, Putin has shown no sign that Ukraine’s latest campaigns will force him to the negotiating table. Instead, he has doubled down, insisting that Russia is winning the war and that its military goals are still achievable.

His Russian negotiators have told the American side that it needs to get Kyiv to agree to sweeping concessions, senior Ukrainian officials involved in the peace negotiations told the FT. Those officials said the US-brokered trilateral peace talks were unlikely to resume until after the summer.

Russia’s focus on Putin’s maximalist goals means Moscow is unlikely to take part in any meaningful talks before February next year, another person in Moscow involved in back-channel talks to end the war said.

“The preferred option of the Russians so far remains that the Americans will ‘deliver’ Ukraine for us,” the person said. “They are not hinting at any concessions. They keep repeating the same objectives . . . Their basis for negotiations essentially means there is no basis for negotiations.”

Even as Russia’s ground offensive has slowed to a grinding and costly creep, Putin has ordered his troops to capture the remainder of the eastern Donetsk province by the end of the year, according to Zelenskyy, a Ukrainian intelligence assessment seen by the FT and two people who speak to the Russian president.

In a state television interview on June 28, Putin admitted that the Ukrainian strikes were causing “problems” but argued that Russia’s troops still had the upper hand.

The Russian president has also increasingly relied on air power to hit at Ukraine, with the scale of Russia’s missile and drone attacks increasing in recent months.

The combined number of Russian missiles and drones launched on Ukraine has exceeded 5,000 per month since February, according to Ukrainian government data.

On Thursday, Russian forces launched 74 missiles and nearly 500 drones at Kyiv. At least 30 people were killed and more than 90 injured, according to Zelenskyy. Ten people were still unaccounted for late Friday as rescuers searched through debris at three strike locations, he said.

Trump attacks Europe for letting in "Third World criminals" and again attacks Democrats in a series of social media messages.

Hi everyone, I hope it's OK to share this here. I wrote a blog post about my assessment on how Europe would react if Russia ever tried to invade the Baltics.

“Don’t poke the bear!” Russians and their Western supporters - and fearers - liked to repeat it even before the full-scale invasion. After more than four years of war and crossing every imaginary “red line” without consequences, it has become a meme at this point. The line implies that Russia is a deadly beast that has the power to lash out violently if threatened, capable of killing whoever “pokes” it.

If Russia is a bear, then Europe is a sleeping dragon. It started dozing off after 1945 and militarily and geopolitically speaking went into deep sleep after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 2022 took the dragon totally off-guard, but the dangers weren’t grave enough to make it wake up, it merely entered its REM sleep phase.

I already shared my long take about a possible Russian invasion of the Baltics, but as the topic has the habit of re- and resurfacing, I felt the urge to expand on it.

Most public debate on the topic envisions Moscow pressuring the region in order to force Europe to stop further aid to Ukraine. Despite it being understandably a more concrete and pressing threat, this - in my opinion - is much less likely than the scenario I will outline.

A limited incursion or bombing campaign against EU and NATO territories would have a much less decisive benefit for Russia, while it would still mobilize increased European support for Ukraine. The lesson the continent would learn from it wouldn’t be that Russia is strong and we should just give in, but that Russia is a threat that needs to be dealt with, and the best way to do so is by arming Ukraine and boosting defence spending.

Let’s imagine a scenario that puts Russia in the best realistic position.

US President Trump or Vance manages to cut a deal with Putin. Russia agrees to a ceasefire on the current line in exchange for US withdrawal from the Baltics and Poland, easing of sanctions, and the normalisation of relations. While this would create widespread anxieties in Eastern Europe, a renewed crisis in EU-US relationships, and further weaken NATO by decisively putting Washington’s security guarantees in question, the continent can finally breathe a sigh of relief. The war is over, Russia managed to accept that they cannot take Ukraine, and has no more reason to threaten Europe, right?

But what if Putin didn’t see it that way? What if instead of demobilizing he would rapidly reconstitute his forces from Ukraine to Belarus and Russia’s north-western borders with the Baltics? He might conclude that with NATO castrated, a friendly administration in Washington, and a Europe still in its early phase of rearmament, this is the right moment to strike and change European security architecture favourable to Moscow.

What would be his goal? The pretext might be something between the good old “protection of Russian minorities”, and the “creation of a humanitarian corridor” to Kaliningrad. His true objective would likely be to force NATO troops to fully withdraw from the region, giving the organisation a final blow, while also weakening EU unity and cohesion, creating a divided continent. This would create a reality where Russia is the de facto “security guarantor” of Eastern Europe, and use this as leverage to influence its politics. Basically, the return of the Eastern Bloc as a buffer.

Putin’s base thesis is that the “West” and its democracies are in inevitable decline. Europeans are not ready for war, and there is little to no societal resolve to defend the Baltics. Sort of “he only needs to kick the door in, and the whole system would collapse”.

How would this play out?

Let’s assume Moscow gave an ultimatum for European capitals to withdraw their forces from the Baltics while amassing its troops near the border. How would these countries react? It is possible that they might start negotiations with Russia, but it’s extremely unlikely that they would comply. The best Putin could achieve would be the status quo, and the blocking of extra troops fearing escalation. 

Then day one comes, Russian forces cross the EU border in a full-scale invasion of all three Baltic states. Putin gives another long speech watched by the entire world where he threatens to use nukes and immediate long-range strikes on Berlin, Paris, London, and anyone who is willing to engage the Russian military.

This might cause an immediate political crisis in European capitals. Perhaps many would call for an urgent troop withdrawal from the Baltics, and assuming that Russia manages to avoid killing their soldiers already stationed there, it could avoid creating an immediate rally around the flag effect. Fear might override the resolve in the vast majority of European societies. It is already a big if, but dangerously plausible enough to run with the assumption.

However, there are nations that would not be deterred, and immediately treat any kind of incursion or attack on the Baltics as an attack on themselves. This would certainly include Poland, Finland, Sweden, and crucially Ukraine. No matter what other countries do, they would do everything possible to make sure that Russia cannot reach its objectives. It would be an existential issue for them from day one.

Similarly, EU institutions would unavoidably treat it as an attack on the whole Union. Brussels cannot accept a hostile country invading any part of its territory. It would create a deadly precedent that delegitimises its entire raison d'être as a guarantor of peace.

Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Finnish, and Swedish officials occupy key positions in Brussels, and they would do everything in their power to push for a collective response. Let’s not forget that an Estonian, Kaja Kallas serves as the EU's chief diplomat. She guides the Union's common foreign and security policy and external action. She would immediately use her full political capital to make sure the EU will be mobilized to protect her country.

All in all, there would be enormous pressure from multiple directions that pushes EU institutions and member states to respond decisively.

As the days and weeks pass, it will become clear to everyone that the Baltics are not going to surrender, its population is ready to fight, and Finland, Sweden, and Poland will not back down either. Europeans would start seeing Russian bombardments and killings in EU territory. They couldn’t just ignore that nations they share decades long alliances and a common Union with are getting murdered.

These nations have not only been friendly for as long as they can remember, but essentially family. In Germany alone there are two million Poles. Many of them already have German family members, and all of them have German colleagues and acquaintances. This is true for other parts of Western Europe as well and other nations involved. 

The citizens alone would put a massive pressure on European capitals, but probably not the main one. I find it certain that Denmark, Norway, and the UK would shortly join the war as well. Geography and national identities would pull them in if NATO Article 5 wasn’t binding enough. This would create another wave of pressure on individual Europe states. As more and more countries join unilaterally, they would also start pushing everyone else for support. It would create a domino effect that couldn’t stop in Copenhagen or London.

The EU proved it time and time again that it can pull itself together to find money and political will to deal with a crisis. This was showcased clearly during the pandemic and then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It’s impossible to imagine that Brussels would not treat this at the very least as seriously as those two instances. 

Just for the pandemic recovery fund the Union managed to come up with €750 billion, and provided $226 billion in financial, military, humanitarian, and refugee assistance to Ukraine. €100s of billions would immediately be allocated for the war and eventually it would likely reach into the trillions mark. Russia’s roughly €165 billion military spending would immediately be put to shame.

This is where the dragon would awaken. The only reason Europe was sleeping on defence was due to its conviction that the US would protect it, and Russia would not be a threat anyway. Both of these assumptions would collapse immediately.

There would be arguments, disagreements, and not everybody would provide the same level of support. Perhaps Spain, Portugal, or Greece would not be willing to send troops (they did participate in the war in Afghanistan though, one might assume that the Baltics would be a more important cause), but they would certainly send other assistance, and would not be able to justify inaction.

History teaches us that an external attack often leads to centralization and unification. The European identity’s foundation myth is based on a story like this. The Battle of Thermopylae that united the Greeks against the Persians. More than two millennia later Bismarck showed us that a talented political operator can even provoke an external attack to create a push for unification. Europe already has the pieces scattered for this unification to happen.

Ukraine

In this situation, it would be foolish to imagine them sitting on their hands. The first place the EU would turn to would be Kyiv. They have the experience, the will to fight, and they are the only ones capable of fighting the drone war of the 21st century. Ukraine would be flooded with orders for drones and demand to train European drone pilots.

Kyiv would also eagerly take the opportunity to reopen the frontline to take back its territory. Since Russia is threatening the entire continent, now Europe would be incentivised to encourage them to do so to distract Moscow.

Eventually, Ukraine would be the real winner of this war. It would lock in European support like nothing else could, and retaking its full territories would become a likely prospect. It would clearly showcase that the continent needs them, and would give a giant boost to its EU membership aspirations.

A European Army

A European Army already enjoys popular support across the EU. All it needs is a final push.

The European Union (without Norway and the UK) has 450 million people. More than three times as many as Russia, and an economy ten times larger. Even if we are pessimistic, this would mean millions - but more likely tens of millions - of people who are ready to take up arms to defend the continent, and an economic base that can easily support them.

Perhaps the initial phases might go poorly - however knowing how the Russian army fared in Ukraine and how prepared the immediately involved countries are, this is at least doubtful -, but Europe could sustain a war much longer than Russia can, simply by the size of its economy and population.

The longer the war would go on the worse the outcome would be for Moscow. Europe would eventually organise its defence, train and equip the millions of people ready to fight, create a coherent fighting force, and learn how to wage war.

At the same time this would create an emotionally powerful story for Europe. We fight and bleed together to defend our continent and our democracies against tyranny and barbarism. This civilisational founding myth would make the EU a potential global superpower akin to the US and China. What we lack in comparison to these giants is unity. The economy and potential already exists, and a clear external threat would create that urgency for unity.

Summary

Moscow cannot just attack the Baltics and get away with it, but Putin might see it very differently. Just like Saddam Hussein didn’t learn from his disastrous war against Iran and still started another disastrous war against Kuwait in just two years, we cannot rule out Putin doing the same.

Similar incentives might be at play as well: more than one million men at arms need a purpose or they might become a domestic threat. He might think it is better to wage another war than to demobilize and face the economic and societal consequences.

Europe’s most important task for the coming years is to make sure that the Kremlin understand what would happen if they invaded. We must prepare for war so we never have to fight it. We must do everything to deter Russia regardless of what the US is doing. Moscow must hear the message clearly: don’t wake up the dragon!

US President Donald Trump said it is "ridiculous" for the United States to continue its "one-sided" relationship with NATO.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius pushed back against calls by US President Donald Trump that European allies within NATO should be unconditionally loyal to Washington.

“NATO is not about blind obedience,” Pistorius told Der Spiegel magazine in an interview published on Thursday. “Decisions within NATO are taken by free consensus of all member states, and without being dictated by individual member states.”

Pistorius said he did not expect any further criticism from the US directed at Germany during the NATO summit in Turkey next week, after a spat between German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Trump over the US strategy in the Iran war.

The US has floated the idea of granting political and economic benefits to NATO allies that spend more on defense, raising the prospect of a two-tier alliance.

The idea speaks to ongoing tensions within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as Trump pressures European allies to assume more of the military alliance’s funding burden. European leaders have been broadly receptive, but are anxious about Trump ending US security commitments to the continent.

Washington has rattled allies in recent months with shifting announcements about pulling troops and resources from Europe. Already, the US has said it will withdraw 5,000 troops from Europe and slash the military assets Washington would provide in a crisis.