The scale of Ukraine’s weekend attack on Moscow showcased Ukraine’s ability to overwhelm the air defenses of the most heavily-protected city in Russia.
It raised two questions. The first: is Ukraine now a deep strike peer to its enemy? (Ukrainian sources say mostly yes, with caveats). The second: is Ukraine shifting from a strategy of wearing Russia down towards direct retaliation? That one is harder to answer but a hard pivot? Unlikely.
The second question stems from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 10 May vow that Ukraine will respond to Russian strikes in kind from now on. Days later, Russia launched its biggest mass strike against Ukraine yet, killing over two dozen people and injuring dozens more, including children. After this strike, Zelenskyy made no secret that he instructed his military chiefs to figure out how to retaliate.
The word retaliation conjures the idea of a more emotion-based deep strike campaign, with threats of regional escalation. It also implies a shift from eroding Russian air defenses, oil infrastructure, and military manufacturing, to a less productive strategy of wasteful tit-for-tat.
There is no public answer to what Ukraine’s top strategists are thinking. When contacted, military intelligence sources were tight-lipped about future plans, as they should be. One Ukrainian source questioned how much the weekend strike practically accomplished.
However, other Ukrainian analysts and sources cautioned against reading too much into the attack, then drawing sweeping conclusions. The Moscow targets had military value. While almost certainly a retaliation, the strike fits into a pattern of Ukraine’s attacks on refineries, military factories, and air defenses that have been ramping up for years.
Ukraine and Russia already attack each other at long range, daily. Ukraine attacked other refineries in the days following the Moscow barrage.
“If Moscow didn't have any military assets, Ukraine would not strike the Russian capital," said Ivan Kirichevskyi, a soldier with the 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment and expert author at military analytics site Defense Express. "Attacking Moscow isn't some kind of symbolic retribution."
The psychological impact was most likely part of the goal, after Russia requested a ceasefire for its significantly scaled-down 9 May parade, ensuring that capital residents know what Ukraine is capable of. It doesn’t mean that Ukraine has lifted intimidation above its other objectives.
“This is not a shift, but a demonstration of Ukraine’s strike capabilities,” said Anton Zemlyanyi, a senior analyst with the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre. “The strike on Moscow… is only a marker of Ukraine’s ability to inflict damage on the most protected region of the aggressor country.”
“In essence, two factors coincided — that is the media effect of the strikes and the military feasibility, the destruction of the oil refinery and other facilities around Moscow.”
The targets
Ukraine launched about 600 drones across 14 regions, although the attack on the Russian capital got most of the attention. The Moscow refinery was hit, along with the Solnechnogorskaya and Volodarskaya oil pumping stations.
Drones hit the Angstrem plant, which supplies semiconductors for Russia's military-industrial complex and is under US sanctions. Elma Technopark, which makes microelectronics, optical systems, and robotics enterprises in Russian military supply chains, was also struck. Fires were reported at both plants.
Russian authorities reported that at least four people died: three in Moscow and one in Belgorod. Moscow's regional governor said that a woman was killed after a home was hit north of Moscow and two people were killed in the outlying village of Pogorelki.
OSINT analysts looking at the strikes said that some impacts happened very close to Russia’s air defense emplacements, for example one private residence in Pogorelki.
"The Russians equip Pantsir systems on the roofs of buildings. This is clearly visible in the photos," Kirichevskyi said. “There’s a legitimate military target for you."
"This is a matter of responsibility of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which, somehow, did not care about minimizing casualties among the civilian population.”
Zelenskyy quickly made a statement saying that Ukraine was fully justified in the strike. Indeed, the Moscow military district is chock-full of facilities that contribute directly to Russia’s war machine.
Cost-benefit
The harder question to answer is whether this attack was “worth it” from a military standpoint.
Reuters reported that even though reported damage to the Moscow refinery was light, it stopped processing after the strike, out of caution. Ukraine regularly strikes the same targets several times in a row.
Damage to Angstrem is difficult to quantify, but does add to the company’s many troubles. Last week, Moscow Times reported that the chipmaker’s profits have collapsed 50-fold since 2025 as a result of Western sanctions and failed investments.
According to the Security Service of Ukraine, the pumping stations are critical for storing and pumping fuel for the Russian military and will degrade Russia's war machine.
Not all Ukrainians are convinced. A source in the Unmanned Systems Forces not involved in the attacks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they are "not sure what we've gained and what Russia lost after those strikes."
"I'm not sure this shows an improvement in our ability to kick ass. We did much more sophisticated operations," they added.
"I hope we don't lose our focus on the ultimate goal of surviving and winning the war. If these strikes on Moscow brought us closer to this goal, good, but I just don't see it."
However, others speaking with Euromaidan Press would disagree. Bogdan Popov, an analyst with defense consulting firm Triada Trade Partners, summed up the argument.
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“The strikes on Moscow have a bit of a different goal (compared to) regular strikes on for example Primosk,” Popov said. “It presents not just an economic and military but also a psychological effect.”
“In the Russian Federation, Moscow and Saint Petersburg matter more for internal politics and Putin’s approval than any other region,” he added.
“Sometimes you need to remind people and decisionmakers in Moscow that they are not not safe at all.”
Russians were somewhat intimidated even before the strike. According to a survey conducted on 1-3 May by the pro-Kremlin Public Opinion Foundation, 18% of respondents named "Ukrainian shelling" as the most important topic of the previous week, compared to 16% who cited the war in Ukraine. Only 2% said Ukrainian shelling was a top issue in February.
Sharpening the spears
Ukraine has spent the past few years doing four things. One: improving and learning to scale its long-range drone production. Two: learning how to use it more effectively. Three: picking apart Russia’s air defenses. And four: eroding Russia’s key source of revenue and warfighting capability.
An investigation by Tochniy found that just under two-thirds of Ukraine’s long-range strikes target occupied territories, with the lion’s share of attacks hitting Russian air defense assets there. This cuts corridors enabling the remaining 36% of long-range strikes to hit Russian territory, to deal sustained economic and logistical damage.
As Tochniy put it, “Ukraine is treating Russian border regions as an extension of the battlespace logistics network, not merely as a pressure or deterrence tool.”
Meanwhile, at home, Ukraine has been learning to build more long-range weapons, whittling down its unwieldy menagerie of systems towards scalable, proven solutions, and continually improving them. Kirichevskyi claimed that as far as the top-used FP-1 and An-196 Lyutiy drones are concerned, Ukraine has reached production volumes "comparable to or perhaps even exceeding the Russian Shaheds."
Ukrainians have also become better at coordinating units that conduct the strikes, which is key to overcoming Russia’s defenses, which were reportedly taking out 90% of Ukrainian long-range weapons, according to a December report by the Royal United Services Institute.
"No one says that Russian air defense is weak," Kirichevskyi said. “The achievement is… that we now have more opportunities to strike.” All these factors combined have led to what Ukraine was able to demonstrate over the weekend.
“What happened in Moscow, no one can explain yet. But it's all very simple,” he added.
“Moscow's air defense, which was honed even to repel a nuclear missile strike… Well, it never coped under the pressure of our regular UAVs. This is unthinkable. And our deep strike capabilities are still growing.”
Multiple analysts agreed with him. “I will say that these are only the first results,” said Mykhailo Samus, a Ukrainian veteran and defense expert. Popov said that Ukraine will invest a big chunk of the 90 billion euro EU loan into more long-range drone production.
Part of a bigger strategy
It’s very likely that the Kremlin knows all this. The ceasefire proposal ahead of the 9 May parade on the Red Square and the parade's scale-down was a tacit admission that the Kremlin was sufficiently concerned about Ukraine’s capabilities to take that step.
Ukraine took the opportunity to exchange some prisoners, but Zelensky made his “respond in kind” vow the day after the ersatz-parade was done, three days before Russia’s record attack.
Russia has followed up just about every “ceasefire” with a mass strike and last week was no exception. Zelenskyy knows this pattern. He could easily have guessed what was coming. It’s also not out of the question that the president acted with public morale in mind—he’s been known to take populist steps in the past.
Whether he made the announcement on purpose, to then have the reason to display the show of force over Moscow is unknown. Deep strike operations, especially ones of that size, are complex and take a long time to plan, but it’s also possible that the Moscow attack wasn’t prepared in advance.
What is clearer is that Ukraine’s deep strike strategy is a massive interlocking system with many moving parts that cannot work without one another. In order for deep strikes to succeed, Ukraine must continue targeting logistics corridors, refineries, military factories, railways and other infrastructure, as well as air defenses, in a methodical way, across a broad swath of Russia and the occupied territories.
This is why multiple observers believe that weekend-style mass strikes against Moscow or other large cities will represent just one facet of this system rather than a hard pivot in how Ukraine does war at long range.
The actual strategic shift in deep strikes “happened earlier, characterized by an increase in the use of drones, target engagements, and depth of strikes,” Zemlyanyi said.
If Kyiv can maintain momentum and keep its eyes on the prize, Ukrainians will be able to continually degrade Russia’s ability to protect itself and continue fighting.
“Personally, I believe that it is not worth over-focusing on Moscow,” Zemlyanyi added. “There are lots of facilities (elsewhere) in Russia whose destruction can have a greater effect and be carried out with the help of fewer resources.”
“However, it is definitely necessary to gradually probe the air defense systems around Moscow and implement periodic campaigns to destroy facilities there.”
