Ukraine’s battlefield successes in 2026 are forcing Vladimir Putin to reassess his original strategy for victory and shift the focus from advances on the front to a large-scale campaign of long-range strikes. Russia seeks to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable and thereby force Kyiv into capitulation.
This is stated in a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Analysts note that the Russian Defense Ministry is already shaping an information narrative to justify its autumn-winter campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. On October 4, the ministry announced an intensification of attacks on Kyiv, Kyiv region and Ukraine as a whole, seeking to portray them as a response to alleged Ukrainian strikes on civilian targets in Russia.
ISW emphasizes that Russia began its campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in late September — earlier than in previous years. Analysts believe Moscow may be rushing to carry out strikes before Ukraine has time to strengthen its defenses against Russian ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones.
Analysts also believe that the Russian strikes are not a genuine response to specific events. ISW described some of the Russian Defense Ministry’s arguments as unfounded, including accusations that Ukraine attacked Russian electoral infrastructure during the September State Duma elections, for which Moscow provided no evidence.
Even the Kremlin-linked Rybar project criticized the Russian Defense Ministry’s attempt to present the new strike campaign as a “response”. The project pointed out that Russian forces have been regularly attacking Kyiv since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, rather than only beginning to do so after recent events in Russia.
According to ISW, the intensity of Russian strikes had already increased by the end of September. Between October 1 and 4, Russian forces attacked Kyiv’s Northern and Southern bridges seven times, seeking to disrupt the economy and the daily life of the population.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that in the week from September 27 to October 4 alone, Russia used more than 1,900 attack drones against Ukraine, including more than 800 jet-powered drones, as well as 1,700 aerial bombs and 25 missiles.
ISW believes the Kremlin hopes that increasingly large-scale and deadly strikes on civilian and critical infrastructure will distract from Ukraine’s battlefield successes and force the country to accept Russian demands.
