The two countries are locked in a fight as to who runs out of men and money first
Volodymyr Zelensky’s new military priority is hitting the Russian economy through long-range missile attacks. Pictured: People at a market near the site of a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine
29 October 2025
The invasion of Ukraine is becoming a long-range missile war, as both sides seek military advantage away from the blood-soaked, muddy, drone-saturated death traps of the eastern Ukraine trenches.
In the past 24 hours alone, Ukraine is reported to have hit chemical and oil plants deep in Russia as well as in occupied Crimea, while Russian forces launched 38 drones at gas facilities and civilian targets in the east and north of Ukraine.
Rather than seeing this as an upping of the tempo before a ceasefire, it is more likely to be another stage of an increasingly all-out conflict. As a recent US intelligence assessment reported, there is no sign that Vladimir Putin wants peace or even a ceasefire. He continues to wage war.
So what is the aim of this missile war, and might it yet decide the victor in this struggle?
Russia aims to destroy Ukraine’s electricity supplies. Putin wants Ukrainians citizens to freeze, eroding their will to resist, as well as hitting cities directly to create fear. For its part, Ukraine aims to undermine Russia’s ability to fund the war by destroying its oil refining businesses, damaging its ports, and disrupting civilian life as a byproduct. Russia’s targets are civilian focused, Ukraine’s primarily economic.
Putin’s long-range weapons are the Iranian-designed Shahed drones, now known as the Geran series. They are faster and lighter than before, with larger warheads and better electronic warhead protection. Their steeper angle of descent as they near their target – practically vertical – has made destroying them much harder.
The Russian armed forces additionally use ballistic missiles and silent but deadly glide bombs. The latter are old, large free-fall bombs updated with a wing frame and with a navigation system attached. Even when they miss their target, they devastate the land immediately around it. Their range is being extended. The largest, the FAB-3000, has a warhead of 1.2 tonnes of high explosives and can send shrapnel a mile in all directions.
Since late 2022, Russia’s strategy for destroying Ukraine has been three-fold. First, hold what land Russian soldiers have seized and make grinding progress, taking one devastated city at a time. Second, undermine civilian morale by bombing Ukrainian cities and destroying the energy supply. Third, break the link between Ukraine and the West.
Researching my book, The New Total War, I visited bombed-out power stations in Ukraine; vast, cathedral-like structures, their giant turbines and pipes twisted and charred by multiple strikes from drones and missiles. While Russia’s attacks on electricity supplies and cities have not broken morale, they are making life more difficult. In eastern cities such as Kharkiv, many families have bravely stayed, but glide bombs and missiles have placed the city under an effective siege, with its residents constantly on the edge of war, physically and psychologically.
One of the city’s leading psychologists, Vitali Khrystenko, told me, “nobody is planning for the future. They are just living for the day.” The same day, I was shown around a hospital that was building underground operating theatres so that surgeons could operate even when the hospital was being struck. My host, Dr Ivan Parkhomenko, told me: “I don’t know what mental health is anymore. You need to be prepared that this is the last day of your life here.”
Even in the capital, Kyiv, from where I write this, we were out of power for hours yesterday afternoon and evening. The air sirens are a reminder that missiles are hitting us here, too.
However, Ukraine is increasingly fighting back with long-range weapons of its own. Prior to this year, Kyiv lacked the ability to target inside Russia. That has changed. It now has the capability to launch regularly and at longer range.
Ukraine knows it can extract a huge human cost from every kilometre that Russia seizes – currently up to 1.1 million Russians have been killed or injured in the war. But they also know that Putin is not interested in human cost. If anything, he believes he is glorifying his soldiers’ lives by ensuring that they serve and die for Mother Russia.
Therefore, Volodymyr Zelensky and his military commanders know that they have to find other tools – and hitting the Russian economy is their new priority. Ukraine’s target is Russian oil refining. Between 15 and 20 per cent of Russian GDP comes from gas and oil, while refined oil sales to markets such as Turkey, China and Brazil make up a significant proportion of Russian exports.
Already, the Russian economy is feeling the strain. The war is costing the Russian government an extraordinary amount of money, very likely more than $500 million (£380 million) per day, while 40 per cent of the federal budget is now defence related.
The big question is: who will run out of men and money first? Russia is making slow progress on the eastern front, but analysts suggest it has to find between 20,000 and 30,000 new troops a month to sustain its campaign, as well as funding a revived military industrial complex.
It’s true that Russia has been resilient, but the longer the conflict continues, the greater the likelihood that declining oil and gas revenues, increasing inflation and lowering growth, will start to have a significant impact. By bombing economic targets, Kyiv wants to keep punching that bruise until it grows into something worse.
That is what Ukrainians, sitting by candlelight as they did last night in Kyiv and other cities in this country, now hope.
Dr Bob Seely is the author of The New Total War and a former Member of Parliament
“Since late 2022, Russia’s strategy for destroying Ukraine has been three-fold. First, hold what land Russian soldiers have seized and make grinding progress, taking one devastated city at a time. Second, undermine civilian morale by bombing Ukrainian cities and destroying the energy supply. Third, break the link between Ukraine and the West.”
It’s just so desperately sad to read this. The horror at the staggering hatred and evil of the putinaZis just increases exponentially.
But also the burning shame that we have left the Ukrainians all alone to defend themselves against such filthy savages.
RUSIA DELENDA EST.
And in the words of Edgar Broughton :
OUT DEMONS OUT
Come on you fuckers, send everything you’ve got to Ukraine NOW.
“My host, Dr Ivan Parkhomenko, told me: “I don’t know what mental health is anymore. You need to be prepared that this is the last day of your life here.”
That is how putinaZis must be made to feel. They are vile creatures.
Every west-based politician, media figure or business figure that actively aids their genocide also deserves prosecution for war crimes. The death penalty should not be ruled out for the worst ones.