Hundreds of Ukrainian drones flew over the Russian capital and struck the Kapotny oil refinery with virtually no resistance. The Russian army is losing the game it invented, and this has become a humiliation for Russian President Vladimir Putin, writes The Telegraph in an article dedicated to the Ukrainian attack on Moscow on Thursday, June 18.
The publication emphasizes that Russia's countermeasures are outdated, which allows the Ukrainian Defense Forces to humiliate Putin with the help of tactics and technology.
The publication recalls that it was Russia that began the era of drone warfare when it began launching swarms of Iranian-made Shahed drones into Ukraine.
With each passing year, the Russian army increased the scale of destruction, using ever larger groups of strike drones.
Now Russia has been defeated in the game it invented, which is a humiliation for Vladimir Putin, the British note journalists.
According to analysts, Russia was ill-prepared and underestimated how quickly its own tactics would backfire. In particular, videos posted online show Russian missiles flying past their targets during the repulse of the June 18 attack.
As Emily Ferris, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, noted in a commentary for the publication, it is likely that the altitude of these drones "makes them difficult for Russian air defense systems to detect".
Ukraine is increasing the number of drones in attacks on Russian territory, and has also increased the frequency of strikes. The newspaper notes that strikes on the same object are often carried out with an interval of just a few days. This allows for the discovery of weak points and the exhaustion of Russia's defensive capabilities.
According to Ferris, Russian measures to repel Ukrainian attacks are, as before, still in the early stages of development. As on the battlefield, Russia is relying on "temporary and fragmented workarounds".
Analysts partly explain this by the fact that Russia is still oriented towards time-tested methods of defense, while Ukraine is constantly trying out new solutions.
In addition, Russia continues to rely on traditional radar systems. Ukraine has deployed a sprawling network of over 14,000 acoustic sensors ("Sky Fortress").
The Russians also rely on expensive missiles, the deficit of which is growing.
Ukrainian drones exploit all the vulnerabilities in Russia's air defenses. According to analysts, the Ukrainian Defense Forces will continue to intensify strikes throughout the summer, as Russia prepares for the State Duma elections (to be held from September 18 to 20, 2026).
“From a political point of view, this will put Putin in a very difficult position”, Emily Ferris noted.
On the morning of June 18, Moscow was subjected to a massive attack by hundreds of drones, explosions were heard throughout the city, and footage of large-scale fires appeared on the Internet.
Later, the Ukrainian Defense Forces confirmed the second strike on Moscow's largest oil refinery, located in the Kapotnya district — 15 km from the Kremlin. Fires broke out in at least five places at the plant, and Moscow was enveloped in black smoke. Russian media reported that this was the largest attack on the Russian capital since the beginning of the war.
According to the General Staff, a complex oil processing plant, three RVS-10000 tanks and one RVS-30000 tank were damaged at the oil refinery.
Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) found that the Ukrainian strikes on Moscow had exposed weaknesses in Russian air defenses, and Russian war correspondents after the attacks began to openly criticize censorship and the inability of the authorities to protect the population from the consequences of the war.
On June 19, Moscow was again attacked by dozens of drones, with local authorities reporting falling “debris“.