In 2026 Ukraine has experienced new levels of pain and hardship, subjected to ever more intense barrages of Russian drones and missiles. At the same time, Ukrainian forces’ battlefield successes have renewed hope that the country may yet be able to turn the tide against the Russian aggressor. As in previous years, during winter Russia directed relentless missile and drone attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, designed to terrorise and freeze Ukrainians and break their will to fight on. Each winter, there have been fears that strikes on power plants would leave people without electricity and heating during the coldest months. Last winter, the fears came true. Several cities were left without heating for extended periods, with temperatures dropping below minus 20 degrees. People posted photos on social media of ice-covered walls inside their apartments. The effects were not evenly distributed. Some suffered longer outages than others. The government and aid agencies expanded the provision of so-called invincibility points, heated shelters where people could warm themselves, charge their devices etc.
As Russia has continued to expand its missile and drone strikes, Ukraine, deprived of the most effective interceptor missiles, has been unable to defend its cities. Above all, America’s cutting off the supply of Patriot missiles has enabled Russia to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability. Ukraine’s air defences are able to shoot down most of the slower moving drones and cruise missiles. But without the Patriots, they are largely defenceless against the fast-moving ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles that Russia is deploying in ever greater numbers. Staying in Kyiv in July, the night-time air raids that Ukrainians have to endure with alarming regularity were of a different order from those I had experienced in previous years. Even while feeling relatively safe in a basement, the repeated loud bangs were unnerving.
Yet amid the misery of Russia’s war against Ukrainian civilians, Ukraine has managed to regain the military initiative for the first time since the failed offensive of 2023. Ukraine’s extensive use of drones has made the frontline an almost impenetrable kill zone. Russia’s offensives have been slowed to a crawl and made ever more costly in terms of the lives of its soldiers. While Russia’s advances have barely moved forwards in 2026, in some areas Ukraine has recovered territory. Meanwhile, since April 2026, Ukraine’s campaign of mid-range drone strikes against Russian lines of communication, especially in southern occupied Ukraine, have left Russian forces, notably in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, increasingly isolated and short of supplies. Crimea, which relies on the highway across southern Ukraine as well as the bridge across the Kerch strait, has been particularly badly affected, with severe shortages of fuel among other things. In the long run, such strikes against Russian logistics aim to make the occupying force’s position in Crimea and southern Ukraine untenable.
In a further blow to Russia’s ability to sustain its war, Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile strikes have targeted Russian oil refineries and logistics centres deep inside the country. Such strikes directly undermine Russia’s economic ability to sustain its war. They also have an important psychological effect, bringing home to Russia’s people the price of the war their president started. Ordinary Russians see the billowing smoke and flames from destroyed oil refineries. They are inconvenienced by the disruption to air transport caused by drone attacks, and by the strikes on warehouses of the Wildberries company, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. And inevitably, Russian civilians are sometimes the victims of off-target drones or drones that have been shot down by Russia’s air defences. Putin even had to slim down his 9 May World War II victory parade in Moscow for fear of Ukrainian drone strikes. As the war drags on, Russians have to pay an ever higher price for their president’s hubris and miscalculation. Long frustrated by the unwillingness of Western leaders to authorise long-range strikes against Russia, for fear of escalation, Ukraine now produces its own long-range weapons, and no longer needs anyone’s permission to strike back at the aggressor.
Yet amid these successes in bringing the war to its enemy, Ukraine faces growing challenges on the home front, as war weariness and divisions grow, threatening to undermine the successes its armed forces have recently achieved. The country has for some time been struggling to recruit enough soldiers. The stream of volunteers to defend the country in the first year has long dried up, amid stories of chaos, incompetence, and sometimes outright brutality in military units. There is strong resistance to the military draft in Ukrainian society. Frequent stories and videos posted online of draft dodgers, often vigorously supported by civilians, resisting recruitment officers, have soured Ukrainians’ sentiments against sending their young men to the army. The country was shocked by images from Lviv in early July, when a large crowd confronted recruitment officers, battering and overturning their vehicle. A report published in June by the Ukrainian media outlet Babel drew attention to widespread abuses, brutality and inadequate medical attention in one military unit, highlighting the excessive number of non-combat deaths. Such stories only compound the resistance to the draft among young men and their families.
The growing dissatisfaction was exacerbated by President Zelensky’s decision in mid-July to replace the popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. Thousands took to the streets in Kyiv and other cities to protest against the decision. Following the example of protests against the decision a year earlier to neuter two independent anti-corruption watchdogs by placing them under the prosecutor-general, who is appointed by the president, the mainly youthful protesters carried pieces of cardboard with their demands scrawled on them. On that earlier occasion, following pressure also from the European Union, Zelensky quickly reversed course. The protesters this time expected a similar outcome, that pressure from the street would force a climbdown. The experience of past mass demonstrations on Kyiv’s central Maidan square in 2004 and 2014 has inculcated a sense in part of Ukraine’s civil society that street protesters have a special legitimacy before which governments should bow. It reflects an enduring lack of trust in state institutions and elected officials among much of the population. But for Zelensky to bow to pressure from the street a second time risked fatally undermining his authority, and his ability to prosecute the war.
Cardboard protests in Kyiv, July 2026
Fedorov had only been defence minister since January, but had acquired a reputation for successfully promoting technological solutions, above all drone warfare, that enabled the military to achieve battlefield successes without heavy losses of soldiers. Even before his appointment to the defence ministry, Fedorov had an impressive record as an innovator and reformer. As minister of digital transformation, he steered the introduction of the Diya mobile app and web portal which digitalised citizens’ and businesses’ interactions with the state. He brought the same zeal for digital transformation to the defence ministry, introducing a digitised system of procurement tracking, designed to increase efficiency, lower costs and tackle corruption in defence procurement. He also sought to scale up drone production.
However, Fedorov’s reforms brought him into conflict with the military high command, above all with the commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky. Syrsky was an accomplished general. As commander of Ukraine’s land forces, he had led the defence of Kyiv at the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and was behind the successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv Region later that year, when Ukrainian forces regained swathes of territory in the north-east of the country. However, Syrsky was unpopular among sections of the media and civil society. Born in Russia, and having begun his military career in the Soviet army, Syrsky was accused of being an old-style Soviet commander, too ready to accept high rates of casualties among his troops, notably in the battle for Bakhmut in 2022-2023. His detractors dubbed him the “butcher” for his allegedly callous disregard for the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. The criticisms were never fully justified. In the early stages of the war, before drones had come into their own, Ukraine’s army suffered a significant disadvantage in the supply of artillery shells. Battles such as Bakhmut were brutal, but they slowed Russia’s advance. Syrsky was undoubtedly a tough and demanding commander. The real question was whether Ukrainian society was ready to accept the sacrifices in soldiers’ lives that the defence of their country would unavoidably entail.
For many Ukrainians, tired of the war and reluctant to send their young men to the army, Fedorov offered hope of victory with less pain and sacrifice, victory through technology. It was a compelling narrative. Contrary to the stereotype peddled by some in the media, Syrsky fully appreciated the importance of drones in modern warfare. Indeed, it was under his command, in June 2024, that the Unmanned Systems Forces were established as a separate branch of the military, the first army in the world to establish a separate, dedicated command for drone warfare. Ukraine’s military was highly innovative well before Fedorov became defence minister. Where Syrsky and Fedorov appear to have differed was that Syrsky and other senior commanders did not believe that drone technology could substitute for conventional weaponry, for artillery and infantry. The hope Fedorov held out of victory through technology, without the sacrifices of soldiers, was almost certainly illusory.
Fedorov’s dismissal crystallised longstanding dissatisfaction with the way the war was being fought, with Zelensky himself, and above all with Syrsky. In public comments, Fedorov complained that Syrsky had been blocking him at every turn. Zelensky explained his decision to replace the defence minister saying that it had reached the point where Fedorov and Syrsky were unable to work together, so that he had reluctantly to choose between them. However, with thousands taking to the streets in Kyiv and other cities, calling for Fedorov to be reinstated and for Syrsky to be replaced, Zelensky bowed to the pressure and removed Syrsky, appointing General Mykhailo Drapatyi in his place.
The protests did not stop, however. Thousands of young people continued to come out every evening, persisting in their demand for Fedorov’s reinstatement. Zelensky attempted to appease the protesters, offering Fedorov other positions, including as deputy prime minister for military innovation. However, Fedorov refused the offers, insisting that he would only accept reinstatement as defence minister.
No doubt, Zelensky hoped that in time the protesters would grow weary, and that their numbers would dwindle. Whether or not Zelensky manages to weather this storm, the crisis has weakened him. The perception that Zelensky is intolerant of anyone whose popularity threatened to eclipse his own had already taken root before the Fedorov affair. Furthermore, corruption in his inner circle has eroded support for the president, amid suspicions that the uncovering of scandals among those close to him was behind the attempt to neutralise the anti-corruption bodies. Zelensky is in a bind. During wartime, under martial law, holding elections would be both impractical and forbidden by the constitution. However, having already exceeded his original mandate as president, Zelensky’s political legitimacy is inevitably diminished. Despite the admiration and respect he still inspires abroad, mis-steps and controversies such as the clumsy removal of Fedorov only diminish him further inside the country. The greatest tragedy of all this would be if such divisions in Ukrainian society would undermine the country’s ability to prosecute the war, even as the military has been scoring some notable successes.
