Why have Ukraine's deep strikes become so effective? Tech innovation is one thing. Deep strike pilots and @usf_army Commander Robert "Magyar" Brovdi tell me how Kyiv has shifted its long-range drone campaign against Russia's energy industry from broad attacks on refineries to more targeted strikes on critical components that are hard to replace. @FT
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Ukrainian military planners, drone operators and energy specialists say Kyiv’s goal is no longer simply to start fires at refineries or destroy storage tanks, but to keep plants offline for longer and make each strike more costly for Moscow. One Ukrainian deep-strike unit member told @FT that the strategy was meticulously “targeted and co-ordinated”.
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Robert Brovdi, @usf_army commander, said refinery attacks form part of a broader campaign to dismantle the networks that sustain Russia’s war effort — from oil exports that finance the military to logistics routes supplying troops at the front. “The objective is clear: 1) to destroy the sources that finance Putin’s war [oil trade] and 2) [to destroy] the military-industrial complex that supplies the occupying army with weapons,” he said.
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Russia and Ukraine inherited similar Soviet-designed energy systems, giving Ukrainian engineers a detailed understanding of many of the industrial processes, equipment layouts and operational vulnerabilities inside Russian facilities.
“Sadly we learn from Russians,” said @Andriypzag , a former defence minister and chair of the Centre for Defence Strategies. “They are doing exactly the same to us here.”
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Ukrainian drone units have also begun repeatedly striking the same critical equipment before repairs are complete, preventing facilities from resuming operations, according to drone operatives and an @FT analysis of satellite images.
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More on Ukraine's intensifying deep-strike campaign against Russia here: ft.com/content/5ca782…
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