Ukraine destroyed a Russian arsenal approximately 240 miles from Moscow as Kremlin troops continue to grind toward a rail and transportation hub in Pokrovsk. Ukrainian forces still control Russian territory after a cross-border raid and the Biden administration is considering Kyiv's requests to strike deeper into Russia using Western weapons. These developments come more than a month after Ukraine's historic and ongoing incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast, and a week after at least 58 people were killed by a Russian missile strike in Poltava.
Along with the U.S., officials from Poland and the U.K. have discussed assisting Ukraine with long-range attacks into Russia including with U.K. Storm Shadow cruise missiles and U.S.-made ATACMS ballistic missiles. Moscow responded by expelling six British diplomats and issuing a new warning: Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West would be participating directly in a war with Russia if they authorized further long-range strikes.
Here's a closer look at some of the most recent updates from Russia's war on Ukraine:
Ukraine destroys Russian arsenal with drone attack
Satellite images from Maxar Technologies show smoke billowing from an ammunition depot approximately 240 miles west of Moscow after a series of large explosions in Toropets, Russia. Reuters reports that a Ukrainian drone attack destroyed a facility storing missiles, guided bombs and artillery ammunition , causing an "earthquake-sized" blast which showed up on seismic monitors and NASA satellites which picked up intense heat emanating from a 14 square kilometre (5 square mile) area. This is the latest in a series of Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian sites, including airfields and energy infrastructure.
Riley Bailey, a Russia analyst, told USA TODAY that Ukraine's ability to produce drones domestically as one reason for increased success in these attacks on Russia. "Ukraine has filled out a very wide, deep stock of long-range, domestically produced drones. The most recent strike was reportedly the largest and it primarily targeted energy infrastructure."
"We've seen strikes against ammunition depots and elements of the Russian defense-industrial base trying to degrade Russian efforts to mobilize defense industry to increase production of military equipment and another place where we've seen the Ukrainian strike campaign focus on is Russian airfields," Bailey said, adding that these airfield strikes reduce Russia's security and their ability to conduct consistent glide bomb attacks against Ukraine.
Bailey sees strikes on infrastructure as aimed at reducing Russia's oil refining capacity, both to supply the Russian military and to degrade a source of funding to the Kremlin in the long term. And energy infrastructure is not the only target of these Ukrainian drone attacks.
Russian attack on Poltava deadliest this year
On Sept. 3, a Russian ballistic missile struck a military school in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, killing 58 and injuring 320, according to the Associated Press . Citing Ukrainian officials, The Associated Press reported the attack also struck a nearby hospital, describing it as one of the deadliest strikes since the war began. The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Telegram that the strike targeted the 179th joint training center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Poltava, which specializes in communications and electronic warfare training. It came days after Kyiv's largest drone attack to date.
Russia has attacked civilian targets since the war began. Notable incidents include the attacks on Kramatorsk railway station in April 2022, which killed 63; a Dnipro apartment building in January 2023, which killed 46; and a Hroza cafe in October 2023, which killed 59. The Russian attack on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol is likely the war's most deadly attack on civilians. An Associated Press investigation found evidence that up to 600 people sheltering there were killed. Initial Ukrainian estimates placed the death toll at 300.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, now a senior director at the Atlantic Council, told USA TODAY that the Poltava attack was the largest airstrike since the major Russian air campaign began in the Fall of 2022 and interpreted it as Moscow's frustrated response to the Kursk incursion. "I call it a tantrum strike because it has very little military effect. It causes a great deal of pain, but strategically, it's of limited value," Herbst said.
Bailey, the Russia analyst for the war institute told told USA TODAY that the Russian military may believe there is an operational aim to such attacks. "When Russian forces first started their large-scale missile and drone strike campaign in October of 2022 the explicit aim was to destroy Ukrainian morale, to destroy Ukraine's will to continue to fight the war. They aimed to collapse the Ukrainian energy grid and use winter as this intense pressure to get the Ukrainian nation, to get the Ukrainian people to abandon their resistance. That effort failed."
"If you view some of these strikes in that lens, you can start to see that some of the strikes on civilian targets could be intentional, that it could be this effort to try to demoralize Ukraine through strike after strike against civilian targets," said Bailey.
Seth Jones, director of the international Security Program and vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told USA TODAY that the Poltava attack is fairly consistent with the Russian military strategy in Ukraine, Syria and Chechnya before that. "CSIS has documented numerous strikes against hospitals in Syria that were treating elements of the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups. When they target the electricity grid, when they've targeted other civilian targets, it is in part attempting to influence, undermine the morale of a population."
"Having visited Ukraine numerous times during the war, when your city comes under attack, you feel it. There's an element of fear. I don't think it is undermining morale within the Ukrainian population, but that certainly is an important and desired end," Jones said.
Air defense is a critical need for Ukraine
The Poltava attack drew a strong response from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: "Air defense systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not in a warehouse somewhere," Zelenskyy said in a video address. "Long-range strikes that can protect us from Russian terror are needed now, not sometime later. Unfortunately, every day of delay means loss of life."
Jones told USA TODAY that while areas like downtown Kyiv are well defended with Patriot batteries, Ukraine doesn’t have enough material to defend all of their cities.
Ukraine was "promised five Patriots at the NATO summit, and they were complaining that they received only one with the second one likely to arrive soon,” said former Ambassador Herbst. “If they had five more Patriot batteries, there would be a good fewer number of Ukrainian dead civilians and maybe soldiers too.”
Jones says that the biggest concern for Ukrainian officials is air defense. "Ukrainians don't have a sufficient supply, and have to make judgment calls about what to shoot down and what not to, or they get overwhelmed."
"When you look at most of the strikes against cities in Ukraine, including the Poltava attacks, they're generally now a combination of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, drones and decoys," Jones said.
According to Bailey, Russian forces are trying to seize on Ukraine's limitations, hoping that the large numbers of cruise missiles and drones overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses and allow ballistic missiles to get through. "The Russians are fine with high interception rates with the drones," Bailey said. "They often use them for that purpose: to both overwhelm the air defenses find out where the air defenses are, then launch the cruise missiles and the ballistic missiles in a way that will try to evade the air defenses and penetrate them."
Bailey describes air defense as a layered umbrella: "You want to make sure that a higher-end system, like the Patriot battery, that has proven effective at intercepting ballistic missiles, is in a place and will have the capability to respond to that, while your lower-end air defense systems can respond to cruise missiles, and you want even lower-end systems responding to the Shahed drones." Both Jones and Bailey pointed to the importance of air support as part of a layered air defense strategy. Bailey told USA TODAY that a layered strategy is difficult to execute if you only have limited systems, and if you have continued pervasive shortages of air defense batteries and interceptors.
What has happened since Ukraine's incursion into Kursk
Last month, Ukraine launched multiple offensive attacks deeper into Russian territory. In one of the biggest assaults on Russia since the war began, Ukraine utilized drones to target several areas , including the capital of Moscow. Kyiv also launched a historic raid across the border destroying a convoy, capturing enemy soldiers and repurposing enemy equipment. Ukraine still controlled Russian territory in Kursk as of Wednesday. Ukraine has launched several counteroffensive operations against Russia throughout the war, most notably in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions in 2022. Ukraine also liberated many settlements in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia territories in 2023.
Herbst says that Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure have grown more successful. "I've seen reports of 14% or more of Russia's oil refining stock being destroyed, and that has both industrial implication and a military-industrial implication.” When it comes to attacking infrastructure, Herbst said, “Russia was there first and has done extraordinary damage in Ukraine.”
Russia targeted Ukrainian energy facilities in a series of airstrikes, according to a Sept. 19 report from Reuters , citing Ukrainian officials: A U.N. monitoring organization suggests the attacks violated humanitarian law and the International Energy agency fears electricity shortfall this winter.
Russia targeted Ukrainian energy facilities in a new wave of airstrikes, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday, despite a U.N. monitoring body saying attacks on the power grid probably violated humanitarian law.
Regional officials said civilian infrastructure had also been damaged, and the International Energy Agency warned of an electricity shortfall in Ukraine this winter.
The Kursk incursion has gotten the attention of the Russian military, evidenced by satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies that show new strategic trenches carved into Russian farmland 20 miles north of the Ukraine border.
"Right now we are at a critical inflection point," Bailey said. "With the incursion into Kursk Oblast, Ukrainian forces have been able to regain the initiative on a limited sector of the front line, start contesting Russia's theaterwide initiative, and start exerting operational pressures on Russian forces that Russian forces haven't experienced for all of 2024."
"We've seen an effort by the Russian military command to silo their high-priority effort in Donetsk Oblast, specifically the offensive operation to seize Pokrovsk. We have seen indications that they have redeployed limited elements that were likely intended for that offensive operation on Pokrovsk, but nothing to suggest that the incursion into Kursk Oblast has heavily disrupted that offensive operation."
A Sept. 14 assessment from the Institute for the Study of War notes claims from Ukrainian officials that the Kursk incursion has prompted Russia to triple the concentration of their forces there, but that individual breakdown of where those units are coming from remains unclear. The assessment indicates that a future Russian counter-offensive would require even more forces and additional redeployments from Ukraine.
While Bailey told USA TODAY that the war institute cannot confirm specific numbers, they have seen reports of redeployments from Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Kharkiv Oblasts, and that Russia appears to be selectively transferring parts of units as opposed to redirecting entire brigades to Kursk. "In every sector of the front where there is active fighting, we have seen redeployments."
"They're trying to draw from elsewhere before they draw from their reserves and their forces in Donetsk Oblast, which is where they're conducting their priority offensive efforts," said Bailey.
Bailey does not see the either Ukrainian incursion or Russian attritional approach as decisive gambles and does not think that either country is currently capable of decisive war-winning operations. Instead, each must conduct multiple campaigns toward operationally significant objectives that are far short of victory. Nonetheless, Bailey thinks that comparing the two is important because it shows two diametrically opposed approaches to the war in Ukraine.
"Russian forces have really embraced positional warfare in Ukraine. There's not rapid movement along the front line and they have determined that they are fine with this consistent attritional offensive that results in creeping gains, as long as that prevents Ukraine from being able to conduct significant counterattacks and retake territory," Bailey said."The fighting in Pokrovsk itself had been a slow grind from village to village, and frontal infantry assault from one position to the next." Bailey said that Russian forces have advanced only roughly 29 kilometers (18 miles) west of Avdiivka."Kursk shows a different approach to war on the Ukrainian side: Ukraine still believes that it can liberate territory through rapid mechanized maneuver. Ukrainian forces leveraged operational surprise and maneuver warfare to advance roughly 28 kilometers (17.4 miles) into Kursk Oblast within the first week of the incursion."
"Ukrainian gains on Russian territory are deeply embarrassing and unsettling and maybe destabilizing for Putin," Herbst said, "but he's betting that they're not, and if his bet is right, then that he's smart to keep all of his most effective troops in Donbas."
"But if he's wrong about that, then, of course, it's a mistake, and there are signs that he may be wrong about it. The thing about an authoritarian state like Russia is that it seems stable, stable, stable, and suddenly it's falling apart."
Ukraine has received billions in aid, but it needs more.
The U.S. along with many other countries, particularly those in the European Union, have been providing Ukraine with military, financial and humanitarian aid throughout the war. Reuters reported that Ukraine has also been receiving Indian munitions transferred by European partners.
From January 2022 through June 2024, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with over $80 billion in assistance, most of it in military aid according to The Kiel Institute for the World Economy , a German-based research institution.
"What becomes important is more," Jones said, referring to the ongoing need for munitions. "You just need more. They're used every day. The Russians keep coming. And so the longer this war goes on, it's an insatiable appetite that the Ukrainians and the Russians are going to have in a war of attrition. It's the sad reality."
"We know that both sides have had problems with supply," former Ambassador Herbst told USA TODAY. "We know that Russia is being supplied with artillery and ammunition from North Korea in large quantities, although of questionable quality. And we also know that the West in general, including the United States, has learned, as Moscow has conducted this major war against Ukraine, that we ourselves do not have enough ammunition."
"There's been talk by the administration, there's been talk by Republicans in Congress, about doing something about this, but the action has been little, not just in connection with supplying Ukraine, but for us to be prepared for standoffs with either Russia or China," said Herbst.
"This is a serious issue which transcends Ukraine. We need to start ramping up our arms production for just straightforward American defense needs, as well as those of our allies and our friends."
Sources: Reuters; Institute for the Study of War; The Associated Press, BBC; Planet Labs PBC; Maxar Technologies; USA TODAY reporting
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