Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has largely come to a standstill. But the war is escalating in the skies.
Analysts say both countries’ offensive capabilities now appear to exceed their air defense capabilities. This means more attacks are hitting their targets, more critical economic infrastructure is being damaged, and more civilians are being killed each week.
“The number of (attacks) is definitely increasing, and the number of casualties is also increasing,” said Olha Poliszczuk, Eastern Europe research manager at global conflict monitoring group ACLED. “There is also an escalation in terms of the types of targets being attacked.”
Ukraine has long been able to attack areas of Russia thousands of miles from the front lines, but the sophistication of its drone technology has increased rapidly in the last year. In late June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced a 40-day campaign to step up drone strikes deep into Russian territory, and his top adviser said the effort would continue.
“This is a significant problem for Russia, because it has become clear over the past 40 days that Russia has serious weaknesses in terms of interception, and Ukraine has been able to achieve its goals fairly successfully,” said Natia Seskulia, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a UK-based security think tank.
Rather than occasional long-range attacks on Russian refineries, Ukraine has been conducting frequent attacks on refineries, oil tankers, electrical substations, and broader energy infrastructure, ACLED’s Polishchuk said. Kiev has also stepped up airstrikes aimed at disrupting Russian military logistics in the occupied eastern territories.
Analysts also noted an increase in attacks targeting the Russian economy more broadly, including a strike on the warehouse of Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer. The Ukrainian government said the facilities were legitimate military targets because the company supplies Russia’s front-line forces.
Kiev has also recently broken through Russian defenses in St. Petersburg and repeatedly attacked Moscow.
This appears to be an effort to remind ordinary Russians of the war and pressure business elites who may have influence in the Kremlin to urge an end to the full-scale invasion.
Seskulia further said that Ukraine’s long-range strike operations have “the practical purpose of delaying Russia’s summer offensive in terms of stretching Russian resources towards intercepting drone attacks.”
A Ukrainian military official previously told CNN that early in the conflict, Russia concentrated its air defense systems along the border and front lines with Ukraine. But Kiev’s strategy is to target various locations in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s occupied territories, forcing the Russian military to expand its air defense systems into a more worn-out tapestry.
The recent attacks also revealed how Russia’s air defense systems are designed not to fight drones, but to shoot down conventional military aircraft and missiles, analysts previously told CNN. Video taken in June showed Russian soldiers firing man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) on a busy highway and scrambling to respond to a single attack.
The Ukrainian military has also accused Russian-occupied Crimea, and ACLED recorded a significant increase in attacks targeting the peninsula’s power and transportation infrastructure in June.
But the increase in airstrikes goes both ways.
“We have seen that all the strikes that Ukraine is carrying out are also reflected in Ukraine,” Polishchuk said. “So, after the attack on Wildberry, now a number of warehouses in Ukraine belonging to Rozecca Electronics Store are being targeted.”
Meanwhile, on the front line, ACLED has recorded a decline in armed clashes in recent months. Russia continues to advance and capture some small settlements, but overall movement is “very, very slow,” Polishchuk said.
The intensification of air combat further increased civilian casualties.
In June, the United Nations recorded the highest number of Ukrainian civilian casualties in a single month since 2022. At least 1,396 civilians were killed and 7,978 injured in the first half of this year in Ukraine, an increase of 37% compared to the same period in 2025. According to the United Nations, most of these civilian casualties occurred in areas controlled by the Ukrainian government, although some have been recorded. Russian occupied territory.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said at least 797 Russian civilians have been killed so far this year. CNN and international watchdog groups cannot independently verify the numbers.
Russia’s nightly attacks on Ukraine far exceed the number of attacks occurring within the country. Last month, Moscow carried out an average of 172 attacks a day against Ukraine, while Kiev carried out an average of 28.
And for months, Russia has been increasing the number of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles it launches with each attack wave, a strategy aimed at overwhelming Ukraine’s air defenses.
These large-scale airstrikes were in addition to small drone attacks targeting civilians in cities close to the front lines, with some civilians previously saying they felt like victims of a “drone safari” carried out by the Russian military. Russia denies targeting civilians.
Russia launched 139 ballistic missiles toward Ukraine in July, more than any other month this year, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Ballistic missiles are particularly difficult to defend because they travel at speeds and altitudes that require U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles, but these missiles are expensive and in short supply.
Earlier this week, Russia fired more than 20 ballistic and anti-ship missiles in Kiev and surrounding areas, killing at least 17 people, but none were shot down.
President Zelenskiy has repeatedly urged allies to build more Patriot interceptor missiles, but efforts have been complicated by the war with Iran, which has decimated the stockpile of American weapons. Ukrainians’ hopes rose after US President Donald Trump promised at last month’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit that he would allow Ukraine to build its own Patriot interceptor missiles. However, Trump later retracted it.
Beyond Patriot interceptors, some observers say both the United States and Ukraine’s European allies may be doing more to strengthen the country’s position and allow for talks that would ultimately end the four-and-a-half year war.
The United States had allocated more than $130 billion (115 billion euros) to support Ukraine through February 2025, according to the Kiel Institute, a German-based think tank. However, Congress did not pass any major new financial or military aid for Ukraine during the second Trump administration.
There does seem to be momentum in Ukraine right now, and it’s possible some negotiations could take place when Kiev is in a more confident position, Polishchuk said. “But from what we’ve seen so far, negotiations with Russia have been woefully ineffective.”
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war calculations were likely to change only based on pressure within Russia, and that pressure could increase as Russia’s economy deteriorates.
RUSI’s Seskulia also said that there is currently no strong window for diplomacy.
“The problem is that[Putin]no longer has the influence that he had when he started negotiating with the United States, and the United States was in a much better position against Russia at the time,” she told CNN, adding that it would be difficult for the Kremlin to paint the end of the war as a major victory at this point.
“I think the other option is escalation, which is probably more likely.”
CNN’s Alex Leeds Matthews and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.
