Kyiv’s drone campaign on the R-280 threatens Moscow’s remaining supply route to Crimea

By Verity Bowman

Verity Bowman is The Telegraph’s Foreign and Global Health Security Reporter, covering conflict, human rights abuses, global development and international health issues, with a particular focus on Ukraine. She previously worked as a News Reporter at the Guardian and was named on the Press Awards’ 30 Under 30 list in 2024.

Published 12 June 2026

For decades, the US campaign against the Ho Chi Minh Trail has stood as the textbook example of a failed attempt to sever an enemy’s supply lines.

American bombers pounded the jungle supply route for years, yet North Vietnamese forces kept moving south regardless.

Now, in the scrublands of southern Ukraine, Kyiv appears to be succeeding where Washington was thwarted.

The R-280 highway, Russia’s last reliable overland route to Crimea, has been transformed by relentless Ukrainian drone strikes into what Russian troops themselves now call the “highway of death”.

Unlike the jungle trails of Vietnam, there is nowhere for the convoys to hide.

Russia has only two routes into Crimea.

The first, via the Kerch Bridge, is so heavily damaged and exposed to repeated strikes that Moscow has long avoided sending fuel and military cargo across it. The second, the R-280, is now being hunted relentlessly.

It is a conundrum that is forcing Moscow to reckon with an uncomfortable truth: after four years of war, there is no longer a safe way to keep Crimea supplied.

“It’s a very classic military strategy. They often say that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics,” Robert Tollast, a researcher in the land warfare team at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think tank, told The Telegraph.

The R-280 is one of Ukraine’s main arteries, stretching more than 300 miles from Rostov-on-Don through occupied Mariupol and Melitopol to Crimea along the coast of the Sea of Azov.

It has become the main supply route for Russian troops fighting across the southern front, from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to the Crimean peninsula itself.

“You’ve got the Kerch Bridge, you’ve got the R-280 highway, and that’s it,” said Nick Reynolds, a research fellow for land warfare at Rusi. “This has always been the dilemma Russia would face if the highway could be cut, or if the bridge could be cut.”

‘Logistics lockdown’

On May 27, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s defence minister, gave this campaign a name and a price tag: a $113m (£84m) “logistics lockdown” on the R-280, formally declaring as policy what had, for weeks, been a quiet and steadily escalating operation.

“Even before the defence minister’s announcement, the Joint Forces had been carrying out strikes against Russian logistics in the south for quite some time, starting in the first half of May,” explained Nazarii Barchuk, an analyst at the Ukrainian Centre for Security and Cooperation.

“The announcement of the ‘logistical blockade’ is a demonstration of Ukrainian capabilities and an emphasis on the success of the operation.”

Footage circulating from Ukrainian drone units shows the campaign in granular detail.

Fuel tankers and supply trucks can be seen caught mid-journey on the R-280, many engulfed in flames after being attacked.

Other clips offer the drone’s perspective, the road rushing into view before the screen cuts to black on impact.

The campaign did not start with logistic strikes, but with a sustained assault against short-range air defences, in this case the Pantsir systems.

The Pantsir is a short-range, mobile air defence system designed to shoot down drones, missiles and aircraft at close range.

It is exactly the kind of weapon Russia would need to protect convoys from the first-person view (FPV) drones now hunting them along the R-280.

The campaign forced Russia to make an impossible choice: defend Crimea’s depots, its rail networks or its refineries.

“A lot of observers were asking, ‘Why is Ukraine doing this?’ There didn’t seem to be a clear military aim,” said Mr Tollast.

“But they’ve inflicted massive losses on these short-range and medium-range air defence systems, and what that has meant is that Russian air defences are spread really thin.”

Mr Barchuk confirmed the picture: a campaign to hunt Russian radar and air defence systems across occupied Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Crimea had destroyed some assets and had forced others to redeploy, stretching coverage.

“Corridors have emerged allowing Ukrainian drones to successfully breach Russian air defences and carry out strikes,” he said.

Ukraine’s attacks are conducted by what are known as “middle strike” drones, among them the Hornet, Darts, FP-2 and the long-range Behemoth, which operate at depths of 60 to 150 miles.

According to Mr Barchuk, the campaign is now a sprawling effort, with the 1st Corps of the Ukrainian National Guard “Azov”, the 17th Army Corps, the Unmanned Systems Forces, the security service and military intelligence all working together.

“The middle-strike munitions that Ukraine is now able to bring into play are less capable on an individual basis, and any single one of them may be relatively easy to shoot down. However, it’s the volume that Ukraine is now able to produce that matters,” said Mr Reynolds.

Russian equipment destroyed on sections of the route between Berdyansk, Melitopol, and Dzhankoi Credit: X/@visionergeo

It is the same dilemma Shahed drones have posed to Ukraine but inverted, and the impact the “highway of death” is having on Russia’s efforts in the south is clear.

The country’s troops on the front line are already facing supply problems with provisions, weapons, drone resupply and rotations, but fuel is the most acute issue.

“The Russian military simply cannot refuel generators to charge radios, battery stations and so on,” said Mr Barchuk.

Each truck carries three to five tons of supplies; hitting hundreds of them, Mr Tollast said, creates “a really miserable situation” for the 3,000 to 5,000 troops a single convoy might support.

Civilians have also felt the weight of Ukraine’s campaign: Fuel shortages have been confirmed in Sevastopol and Yevpatoriya, while ration cards have been introduced and holidaymakers have been stranded without fuel to leave.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, has dismissed the shortages as “unfounded panic” among the population, even as the evidence mounts that Russia’s defences simply cannot keep up.

It is tempting to conclude that Russia neglected its air defences along this route, but Mr Reynolds pushes back on that.

“It’s not so much that Russia hasn’t built up air defences,” he said. “Russia has a lot of air defence covering the entire area; not just this supply route, but also its other critical logistics hubs, command centres and supply depots.”

The problem, he argues, is what those systems were designed for: intercepting small numbers of expensive, high-end cruise and ballistic missiles, not absorbing a relentless swarm of cheap, mass-produced drones.

Russia has tried to adapt, fitting convoys with gun trucks, experimenting with dazzle camouflage and deploying FPV-based interceptors but, as of yet, their efforts have been futile.

The Kremlin’s back-up options are limited. The remaining routes – road, rail, sea or air – are all degraded or simply too risky to use.

Even without a single Ukrainian soldier setting foot back in Crimea, the strategic picture is shifting.

“As we’ve seen on land, while it’s been very difficult for Ukraine to claw back territory, they have been making progress, albeit slowly,” said Mr Reynolds.

“But if Crimea can be put in a position where Russia is unable to adequately supply it, then this becomes a serious bargaining chip in any future negotiations. This is a serious demonstration of Ukrainian capability.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/02/russia-ukraine-war-listen-daily-podcast/

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