WRITTEN BY DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
1ST JUL 2026
Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to prepare new offensive operations aimed at capturing Kyiv, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief has warned, raising fresh concerns that the Kremlin is considering another attempt to seize the Ukrainian capital.
General Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russian commanders had been instructed to develop options for renewed attacks on northern Ukraine, including potential offensives launched from Belarus as well as Russia’s Bryansk region.
According to Syrskyi, one scenario would see Russian forces once again attempt to advance on Kyiv from Belarusian territory, echoing the opening weeks of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Another, which he described as the more likely option, would involve an assault from Russia’s Bryansk region into Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, opening a new axis of attack designed to stretch Ukrainian defences.
The warning comes as fighting intensifies across several fronts and both sides seek to gain the initiative during the summer campaign.
While Russia continues pressing attacks in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has dramatically expanded its own long-range strike campaign against military targets deep inside Russian territory.
On Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Ukrainian forces had struck the Dubna satellite communications centre in Russia’s Moscow region for the second time in a week.
The facility lies around 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Writing on Telegram, Zelensky said the centre played a key role in supporting Russian military operations by gathering reconnaissance data and coordinating forces involved in the invasion.
Ukraine’s General Staff said the installation had also been targeted during an earlier operation last week as part of Kyiv’s expanding campaign against Russia’s command, communications and intelligence infrastructure.
The latest strike forms part of a broader Ukrainian strategy aimed at degrading the systems that allow Russia to sustain military operations far beyond the front line.
In recent months, Ukrainian drones and missiles have repeatedly targeted Russian oil refineries, ammunition depots, airbases, bridges, radar sites and communications facilities hundreds of miles inside Russia.
Kyiv argues that disrupting logistics and command networks is essential to slowing Moscow’s offensive capabilities while increasing the economic cost of continuing the war.
Russia has not publicly commented on Syrskyi’s claims that Putin has ordered preparations for another attempt to capture Kyiv.
Nor has Moscow confirmed the extent of any damage caused by Tuesday’s strike on the Dubna facility.
If the Ukrainian commander’s assessment proves accurate, it would represent one of the clearest indications yet that the Kremlin continues to view Kyiv as a long-term military objective despite the catastrophic failure of its initial assault more than four years ago.
For Ukraine, the message is equally clear.
While Russian forces continue searching for new ways to threaten the capital, Kyiv is determined to ensure the war reaches ever deeper into the military infrastructure that enables Moscow to wage it.
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SHAUN PINNER, UKRAINE CHIEF CORRESPONDENT
Putin’s victory myth explodes: Ukraine exposes Russia’s ‘mighty’ war machine running on empty
July 1, 2026
WRITTEN BY SHAUN PINNER, UKRAINE CHIEF CORRESPONDENT
There has long been a gap between Kremlin rhetoric and battlefield reality. Increasingly, however, that gap is becoming impossible to conceal.
Even as Vladimir Putin continues to claim Russian forces are advancing “in virtually all sectors,” Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, has painted a far more restrained picture of the war, one supported by independent battlefield data and Russia’s own growing logistical problems.
In a wide-ranging interview, Syrskyi warned that Russian military planners continue to examine options for renewed offensive operations from the north.
While speculation has again centred on Belarus, Syrskyi assessed that the more realistic threat lies from Russia’s Bryansk region towards Chernihiv, with the objective of forcing Ukraine to divert valuable reserves away from the eastern and southern fronts rather than launching another failed assault on Kyiv.
His assessment comes as limited diplomatic contacts continue between Washington and Moscow following a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges. The release of Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina and earlier exchanges involving American teacher Marc Fogel demonstrate that communication channels remain open despite the broader confrontation. While separate from the war itself, they illustrate that diplomacy has not disappeared entirely.
The military picture, however, tells a different story.
Only days before Syrskyi’s interview, Putin insisted Russian forces were advancing across almost the entire frontline while dismissing Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia as having little military significance. Yet independent mapping by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) continues to show Russian forces making only incremental territorial gains despite sustaining extraordinary losses.
The contrast with the early months of the invasion is stark.
During the opening phase of the war in 2022, Russian forces rapidly occupied vast areas of Ukrainian territory before suffering major reverses around Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson. Since then, the pace of Russian advances has slowed dramatically. Current ISW assessments indicate Russia is advancing at an average of just a few square kilometres per day despite committing enormous manpower, artillery and air power to the offensive.
Those gains come at a significant cost.
Russia continues losing the equivalent of roughly a brigade every three to four days through those killed and wounded, while expending vast quantities of equipment and munitions to secure advances often measured in hundreds of metres rather than kilometres. The Kremlin’s strategy increasingly resembles one of attrition rather than manoeuvre, relying on overwhelming firepower and manpower rather than operational breakthroughs.
At the same time, Ukraine is steadily expanding the battlefield beyond the frontline.
Rather than focusing solely on trench warfare in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has intensified strikes against oil refineries, ammunition depots, railway infrastructure, fuel storage sites, command centres and logistics hubs across occupied Crimea, the southern land corridor and western Russia.
These attacks are targeting the systems that sustain Russia’s war effort rather than symbolic objectives.
The effects are becoming increasingly visible.
Russian-installed authorities have declared a state of emergency across occupied Crimea amid worsening fuel shortages, transport disruption and rolling power cuts. Reports indicate tourism has collapsed across much of the peninsula, with widespread cancellations and increasing numbers of residents and visitors choosing to leave.
For the Kremlin, Crimea has long represented both a strategic and political prize. Today, however, Moscow finds itself increasingly defending rather than consolidating that achievement.
The southern land corridor linking Russia to Crimea has also come under sustained Ukrainian pressure, threatening one of Moscow’s most important logistical lifelines. That sits uneasily alongside Kremlin claims of sweeping battlefield success. Armies making decisive advances do not normally find themselves struggling to sustain logistics behind their own lines.
Ukraine has also continued extending the war deeper inside Russia itself.
Recent long-range strikes reportedly targeted the Dubna Space Communications Centre in Moscow Oblast, an installation linked to Russian military satellite communications. Ukrainian forces have also expanded the operational use of domestically developed long-range cruise missiles, demonstrating an increasing ability to strike military infrastructure hundreds of kilometres behind the frontline.
At the same time, Russia is becoming increasingly reliant on foreign manpower.
Estimates from Ukrainian and South Korean officials suggest approximately 7,000 North Korean personnel have been killed or wounded while fighting alongside Russian forces. Although exact figures remain difficult to verify independently, the reported losses underline the growing burden being placed on Moscow’s expanding coalition.
Taken together, the latest developments present two competing realities.
The Kremlin continues projecting confidence, promising inevitable victory while insisting Ukrainian strikes have little strategic impact.
The evidence on the ground suggests something rather different.
Russian advances remain slow and costly. Ukraine is steadily increasing pressure on logistics, energy infrastructure and military communications. Crimea and the southern land corridor, once regarded as Moscow’s greatest strategic achievements, are now under growing military and economic strain.
Perhaps most tellingly, ordinary Russians are beginning to experience some of the consequences themselves.
Fuel shortages, transport disruption and power outages have become increasingly difficult for state media to explain away. For months the Kremlin downplayed these problems before Putin himself acknowledged that fuel supplies were becoming an issue.
Wars are ultimately sustained by logistics rather than slogans.
Tanks require fuel. Artillery requires ammunition. Troops require transport, food and supplies. Every damaged railway, destroyed fuel depot and disrupted logistics hub reduces Russia’s ability to sustain offensive operations.
That is precisely where Ukraine is concentrating its efforts.
As General Syrskyi’s assessment and the latest battlefield data increasingly suggest, the gap between Kremlin propaganda and military reality continues to widen.
After all, propaganda doesn’t fill the fuel tank.
Putin’s victory myth explodes: Ukraine exposes Russia’s ‘mighty’ war machine running on empty
“As General Syrskyi’s assessment and the latest battlefield data increasingly suggest, the gap between Kremlin propaganda and military reality continues to widen.”
Yes indeed.
But these filthy murderers have to be taken seriously.
Their noxious, hateful, genocidal desires were set out very clearly in a RIA Novosti OpEd in Feb 2022.
Nothing has changed since then.
Only total defeat and the death of putler can bring peace.