Ukraine turns Russia’s vast territory into a growing liability

For centuries, Russia’s enormous size has been its ultimate shield. Now, Ukraine is steadily turning that same geographic advantage into one of the Kremlin’s biggest vulnerabilities.

As Kyiv expands its long-range strike campaign deep inside Russian territory, the sheer scale of the country is becoming harder — and more expensive — for Moscow to defend.

Putin’s Rear No Longer Feels Safe

Russian military doctrine has long relied on depth. From French invasion of Russia to Operation Barbarossa, invading armies struggled with overstretched supply lines and vast distances.

But modern drone warfare is rewriting that logic. Ukraine now says it can strike targets up to 1,750 kilometres inside Russia using domestically developed long-range systems.

That reach does not even include covert operations like the widely discussed “Operation Spiderweb”, which reportedly hit targets thousands of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

Air Defences Buckle Under Pressure

Kyiv’s strategy is brutally simple: exhaust Russian air defences faster than Moscow can replace them.

According to Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, Ukrainian strikes destroyed 153 Russian air defence assets between December 2025 and mid-May 2026, including 108 surface-to-air missile systems.

The losses are creating dangerous gaps across Russia’s sprawling territory. Critical infrastructure — oil depots, airfields, logistics hubs and factories — is scattered across enormous distances, forcing the Kremlin into a defensive numbers game it may struggle to win.

The Maths Problem Haunting Moscow

A single Russian Pantsir air defence system can effectively cover roughly 4,000 square kilometres under ideal conditions. But the zone stretching from the Ukrainian border to cities like St Petersburg and Kazan spans more than 1.6 million square kilometres.

Russia cannot defend everything. Instead, commanders concentrate systems around strategic sites, leaving vast corridors exposed.

Ukrainian drones are increasingly exploiting those gaps, flying around heavily defended pockets to hit deeper targets inside Russia’s rear.

Factories Cannot Keep Up

The pressure is compounded by production bottlenecks. Western sanctions and export controls continue to squeeze Russia’s military-industrial base, while analysts warn the Kremlin is burning through interceptor missiles faster than factories can replace them.

Research from Royal United Services Institute has also highlighted Russia’s dependence on smuggled foreign technology for air defence production.

The result is a growing strategic dilemma for Vladimir Putin: the larger Russia’s territory, the harder it becomes to protect.

Ukraine has turned Putin’s greatest strength into his biggest weakness