In a special statement after a working meeting held on July 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his country has updated the list of priority targets on the territory of the Russian Federation.
The meeting was attended by the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Mykhailo Drapati and Acting Minister of Defense Yevgeny Khmara.
The main focus of the discussions was the plan for the so-called "long-range sanctions". Since the beginning of the year, Ukrainian forces have carried out over 1,000 combat missions on sites in the Russian rear, striking oil infrastructure, military production plants and key logistics nodes.
The new range of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Russia's vulnerability
According to information from the Ukrainian media Ukrainska Pravda (pravda.com.ua), Kiev's military capabilities now allow for precision strikes at distances exceeding 3,000 kilometers, with technologies continuing to develop. Zelensky stressed that the enormous territorial depth, which was previously considered a strategic advantage for Moscow, is currently becoming a serious challenge for the Russian leadership.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the majority of Russian air defense (ADF) systems are concentrated around the capital Moscow, St. Petersburg, state residences and the Crimean Bridge. This leaves a number of remote military and economic sites, including in the Urals and Siberia, vulnerable to attacks by Ukrainian drones.
The purpose of the operation: Forced diplomacy
As reported by the legal and news publication Sudebno-Yuridicheskaya Gazeta (sud.ua), the new targets will be selected based on their economic and military importance. The strategy aims to maximally limit the Kremlin's ability to finance the war and produce modern weapons.
“Our precision effectively helps create conditions for real diplomacy. We have presented all the necessary proposals to the Russian political leadership to end this war with a dignified peace“, Zelensky said on his official account on the X network (twitter.com).
In parallel, in the past week, there has been an increase in strikes on warehouses of logistics platforms in Russia and the occupied Crimea, which, according to the Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org), is further stretching the resources of Russian air defense.