Trump declared a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine ahead of Russia’s “Victory Day” parade celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Moments later, a presidential decree appeared on Ukraine’s government website. “About the parade in Moscow,” the single-article statement read. “Allow a parade to be held on May 9, 2026, in the city of Moscow.”

The declaration was short but strong on symbolism. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky had spent last week threatening to disturb the celebrations with Ukrainian drones “buzzing” overhead. While he eventually agreed to Trump’s short ceasefire, the point of the Ukrainian statement was that it would be Kyiv, not Washington, dictating the terms.

While the front line of the Ukraine war remains a grinding stalemate, Kyiv’s confidence in setting its own war aims has increased as its long-range drones have brought the war deep inside Russia’s borders. Zelensky’s threats to the Victory Day parade were more than mere posturing.

In the past weeks, Ukraine has evaded Russia’s defenses, dealing unprecedented damage to Russia’s energy economy. At a shortened Victory Day parade, Russian president Vladimir Putin spoke of Russia’s soldiers advancing in Ukraine. Yet just hours later he told reporters that he thought the war could be approaching an end, a hint that Putin sees his country is weary of the conflict. It’s a sign that Ukraine has been pushing Russia closer to serious negotiations.



The Black Sea port city of Tuapse, one of Russia’s most vital energy hubs, presents a stark picture of how Ukraine’s assaults are forcing Russia to change its calculus. Ukrainian drones struck the city’s oil infrastructure four times in 16 days, coating the city in black smog and contaminating 30 miles of Black Sea coastline. The attacks have cost Russia $300 million and closed schools across the city as oily droplets falling from the sky make it unsafe for residents to leave their homes. The strikes in Tuapse are the clearest example that Ukraine may be finding leverage to force a peace on its own terms: Energy exports generate 30 percent of Russia’s federal revenues and determine how much Vladimir Putin can spend on his grinding frontline assault.

When Ukraine first began its long-range strike campaign in 2024, it relied heavily on U.S. help. American satellite imagery provided the majority of the information Ukraine used to identify its targets, said Taras Chmut, the founder of Ukraine’s Come Back Alive Foundation, which helps arm the Ukrainian military. U.S. and British aviators, patrolling the skies nearby in F-35 aircraft, helped identify other installations that the satellites couldn’t detect. The U.S. also provided ATACMS ballistic missiles, manufactured by American defense giant Lockheed Martin, which Chmut says were critical to the campaign because Russian air defenses struggle to intercept them.

But last spring, the Trump administration began to wind down this assistance. In March 2025, the Pentagon announced a review of aid to Ukraine and paused intelligence sharing with the Ukrainian military. Now, the U.S. sends smaller quantities of weapons to Ukraine, purchased by European allies, and provides some access to satellite imagery but no longer lends the intelligence of its F-35s. Ukrainian officials say their stocks of ATACMS have nearly run out.

In their absence, Kyiv has developed its own long-range strike capabilities. This April and May, Ukraine carried out its most effective attacks on Tuapse of the war, targeting not only the refinery but also storage tanks and export facilities, according to Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

The weapons doing most of the damage are now Ukrainian-made. The FP-1, a long-range strike drone with a range up to 1,600 kilometers manufactured by Ukrainian defense company Fire Point, bears the brunt of the work. For targets better protected by Russian air defenses, Ukraine turns to its cruise missiles, which former CIA director General David Petraeus told me in an interview last month travel farther and carry heavier payloads than American cruise missiles. Fabian Hoffman, a Ukrainian defense expert, estimates that 95 percent of the drones and missiles used in long-range strikes are manufactured in Ukraine.

The intelligence needed to direct these weapons is more challenging for Ukraine to replace. Hoffman explains that American satellite and aviation intelligence is crucial—not for finding the energy targets themselves, but for taking out Russian air defenses that stand in the way. “You can find a refinery or a gas facility by looking up the coordinates on Google,” he said. “Where satellites can be really useful is understanding where the adversary deploys its air defense capabilities so that you can reroute around them.”

But Kyiv has managed to find workarounds. French president Emmanuel Macron said in January that two-thirds of the intelligence Ukraine receives now comes from France. “With the United States stepping back, we have obviously started to try to engage European countries more,” Chmut said. “They may be somewhat more technologically limited, but they are faster in making decisions than the Americans.”

The Ukrainian military has also increased attacks on Russian air defenses themselves, as intelligence gaps make it more challenging to evade them. Russia now appears to be running low on the missiles it uses to intercept Ukrainian strikes. Hoffman says that has created opportunities for slower, clunkier Ukrainian drones to reach their targets that might have otherwise been intercepted. “Russia now has to distribute their limited air defense systems over an ever-expanding territory,” Hoffman said, “and Ukraine is exploiting that.”

The attacks have not broken Russia’s war-financing machine. President Zelensky said on May 1 that Russia has lost at least $7 billion since the start of 2026. However, because the war in Iran has pushed up oil prices, Russian oil export revenue is still climbing on the whole. According to Russia’s finance ministry, oil and gas revenues rose 40 percent from March to April this year.

Still, the strikes could eventually erode Russia’s ability to fund and arm its military, even if their impact does not materialize immediately. “The idea of quickly collapsing the adversary through strategic air power—historically, this has never happened. But what has happened repeatedly is that strategic air power unfolded a later effect that degraded adversaries’ war-fighting capacity,” Hoffman said, noting that many labeled the Allied bombing of Germany a failure in 1943 before its wear on Germany’s industrial base became clear a year later.

Unlike in the Second World War, America’s role in ending the war in Ukraine is receding, not expanding. When the Trump administration first paused military assistance to Kyiv in March 2025, after his infamous Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, the U.S. was still providing roughly half of Western military aid to Ukraine. Today, that number has fallen close to zero as Europe pays for almost all new assistance.

Now that the U.S. no longer shoulders Kyiv’s security burden, the limits of Washington’s influence are becoming clearer. “We don’t need anyone’s permission,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said after Zelenskyy posted his note about the Victory Day parade. Yet when it came time for the parade on Saturday—normally a demonstration of Russia’s military might—Russia’s tanks and missiles were nowhere in sight. Just in case, despite President Trump’s ceasefire, any Ukrainian drones still chose to buzz overhead.

© 2026 The Free Press