A tactical revolution in Ukraine?

While global attention drifts elsewhere, Ukraine is quietly transforming modern warfare. A tactical revolution built on drones, attrition and strategic strikes on Russia’s oil economy is beginning to shift the balance on the battlefield.

Peace talks are stalled, and the world is focussed on President Trump’s war with Iran. But on Ukraine’s battlefields, a quiet revolution is underway as Ukrainian investment in drone technology and developing new tactical doctrine starts to pay off.  

Ukraine’s strategy is not a secret, and the plan involves two simple objectives: 

• At operational and tactical-level attrit Putin’s forces on the battlefield, in the air and at sea.
• Meanwhile, at strategic-level reduce oil revenue so that he cannot afford to replace the battlefield losses.   

Therefore, at strategic-level Ukraine is waging a powerful air campaign that targets Russian oil revenue. Simultaneously, at tactical-level the mechanism of attrition is to allow Ukraine’s increasingly sophisticated drones to destroy Russian manpower and material. Since the start of 2025, Ukraine drone based tactical doctrine appears to be maturing on land, resulting in the dynamics of the land campaign shifting. Ukraine is now setting the tempo of the operation and choosing where battles will be fought. In military terminology, Ukraine holds the initiative. 

Ukraine’s strategy: attrition on the battlefield and oil war at home

At strategic-level Putin’s key weakness is manpower. Putin knows Russia cannot beat Ukraine if it is supported by other nations so his propaganda aims to undermine support by creating an impression that:

• Russia’s victory is inevitable.
• Supporting Ukraine is a waste of time.
• Any military aid provided to Ukraine needlessly prolongs the war. 

Perpetuating this propaganda requires Putin to demonstrate that Russia is a threat, so he sacrifices vast numbers of soldiers to maintain an incremental advance on land.  

History tells us that Putin does not have the political support to use conscripts, so the soldiers he sacrifices are well-paid ‘contract soldiers.’ Russia has general conscription but conscripts cannot serve overseas so professional, longer-serving soldiers are also recruited, called ‘contract soldiers.’ However, a ‘contract soldier’ is expensive to recruit because enticing men to fight in Ukraine requires high wages, and large benefits.  Ukraine has appreciated that reducing Russia’s revenue reduces Putin’s war-making potential by making it harder to subsidise the use of ‘contract soldiers.’  Therefore, Ukraine focuses it’s air campaign on Russia’s most important source of revenue; oil, because without money Putin will struggle to recruit soldiers. 

Ukraine’s air strikes recently increased, including two notable strikes in the last week:

• 12 March – An important pump station at Tikhoretsk that controls oil flow to Russia’s Black Sea ports was attacked. Bloomberg reporting “… a large fire broke out at a terminal in Tikhoretsk, where a major oil depot and a pumping station are located…”.
• 14-15 March – The Afipsy refinery and the Kavkaz port, in Krasnador. Ukraine has issued a statement claiming damage was heavy.

But, the strikes on Tikhoretsk and Afipsy are just the latest in a series of attacks on Russian oil facilities.  In a four-month period, between August and November 2025 Ukraine executed approx. 60 successful attacks on Russian oil infra-structure, reducing refining capacity by approx. 26%.  The campaign culminated in November 2025 when Ukraine hit 14 targets in a month. Ukrainian attacks escalated again in 2026 and Bloomberg calculated recently that in 2026 Ukraine has launched at least 120 attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, with 81 strikes explicitly targeting refineries.  

The impact of Ukraine’s campaign is hard to judge. We know that Russia is exporting less oil, United 24 reporting high petrol prices and a 13% drop in refining capacity in mid-2025. Additionally, United 24 reported in March this year that “Major Russian insurers like Soglasie and SOGAZ noted that the frequency of payouts has multiplied exponentially, with the average claim for a single refinery strike reaching several hundred million rubles. Industry experts attribute the heavier damage to evolving Ukrainian tactics, particularly the use of massive drone swarms to overwhelm local defences.” Concerns in the Russian insurance industry is a good indicator of the impact of Ukraine’s campaign because these companies are very good at studying risk.  

Ukraine’s air campaign is constantly evolving and their ability to strike further and harder has clearly increased. However, it should be noted that these attacks are small moves in a long-game, and Vox Ukraine summed up their impact in February as follows “They systematically accelerate the technological degradation of an entire industry already cut off from Western equipment and technology. They steadily compress the margins on the exports that finance the Kremlin’s war machine.” 

Reducing Russian revenue will take time, and is currently at risk as sanctions on Russian oil exports start to reduce because the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. However, Ukraine is making progress and its activity is reducing profit margins for oil exports thereby limiting revenue. Notably, even if sanctions disappear Russia will need to rebuild its infra-structure before capitalising on the situation.  Meanwhile, Ukraine is putting that time to good use by deploying new technology and tactics in the land campaign. 

Ukraine regains the initiative on the battlefield

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has regained the initiative or is able to dictate where and when decisive manoeuvres will happen. In summary, Ukraine is ‘fixing’ a large part of Russia’s combat forces at Pokrovsk, where it is committed to that battle but is unable to breakthrough Ukraine’s lines.  In fact, the Russian assault may be culminating, Stefan Korshak opining in the Kyiv Post that “… Pokrovsk ISN’T the hottest sector of the front. I monitor the 25th Airborne Brigade, and the report there is that the Russians seem tired; they’ll fling inaccurate glide bombs from time to time, but ground assaults have pretty much quit.”  

Meanwhile, further south in Dnipropetrovsk Ukrainian forces are on the offensive.  Specifically, Ukraine is attacking around Huliapole, a town recently captured by Russia.  Ukraine claims to have captured approx. 400 square kilometres in recent weeks, liberating 12 villages.  American military ‘think tank’ the Institute for the Study of War reported on 16 March that “Continued Ukrainian advances in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast are likely constraining Russian offensive operations in the Oleksandrivka direction and may soon threaten Russian offensive operations in the Hulyaipole direction. Ukrainian forces have reportedly liberated more than 400 square kilometers in the Oleksandrivka and Hulyaipole directions from late January 2026 to about March 10 in two separate drives.” 

In simple terms, Ukraine is currently choosing when and where to fight and has switched its main effort south into an offensive operation near Dnipropetrovsk, forcing Russia to respond. This indicates that Ukraine holds the initiative at operational-level and is disrupting Russian plans to generate a summer offensive.  

Drone warfare is transforming frontline tactics

The simple answer is that Ukraine’s drone tactics are maturing.  A key feature of the modern battlefield is the drone-based ‘kill web,’ a space above the frontline within which surveillance is combined with immediate strike capabilities. Inside a ‘kill web,’ any large unit will be detected, engaged, and may be destroyed. 

During the last two years of the war, we have seen both sides master the development of tactical-level defensive ‘kill webs’ that effectively ‘freeze’ movement on the frontline.  In recent weeks, Ukraine is systematically demonstrating the next phase in the evolution of drone tactics, using drones offensively.  

This change has been coming for some time. In early 2025, Ukraine announced its goal of producing 4.5 million drones by the end of the year. By the end of 2025, Ukraine was working with its European partners providing advice and setting up production facilities. Ukraine has now built a supply chain that provides an enormous number of tactical drones, some for surveillance and others for attack. 

Like Russia, Ukraine has also consolidated its drones and drone operators into large units like Magyars Birds or Russia’s Rubicon. This organisational change allows drones and the best operators to be concentrated at the point of main effort. It also represents a transition in thinking about how drones are used. So, instead of seeing drones as a small helicopter that an infantry company or platoon unit can use to ‘look over the hill,’ or perhaps attack a point target, Ukraine and Russia are now thinking in terms of ‘massed effects.’  

And in the attack, this means using drones as a form of indirect fire to neutralise or suppress enemy positions over a large area, a role that artillery historically performed. Reports from the fighting in Dnipropetrovsk show the Ukrainian forces using massed formations (or swarms) of drones to create ‘creeping barrages’ or ‘cascades’ of attack drones that neutralise or suppress enemy positions ahead of advancing infantry.  A tactic familiar to generations of gunners. Preston Stewart’s, You Tube channel provides good analysis of these tactics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSFm2DTUIxA. 

As a force advances behind its supporting barrage of attack drones, the ground troops are also protected by its defensive ‘kill web,’ that extends from the original start position over the advancing force to help it secure captured ground.  Surveillance and attack drones working together to secures the flanks of the advance, an activity the requires excellent coordination and centralised control of drone resources. 

Essentially, both sides are brigading their drone assets in centralised units to deliver specific battlefield ‘effects’ at scale.  For example, complete and continuous surveillance of an area, or massed drone attacks on enemy ground positions. Concentration of drones, operators and maintainers enables economies of scale and consistent delivery of a capability in a manner that distributed drone capabilities does not.  In this model, drone-based ‘effects’ can easily be drawn forward from drone units by soldiers on the frontline. Likewise, if required elsewhere they can be quickly moved to other points on the battlefield because they are centrally controlled. This reduces logistical and management stress on small unit command chains, and is like operational models already employed by other arms like artillery, logistics or engineers.   

In my opinion, the next evolution will be using AI for coordination of drones. AI enhancing a side’s ability to pilot large numbers of drones either; within an attack swarm or ‘on post’ maintaining surveillance.  Activities that currently require human pilots to fly individual drones within a formation. Defence One recently discussed Ukrainian drone innovations and the use of AI, stating that  “… future drone operations may not require highly trained drone pilots, just regular soldiers who can outline basic mission parameters. The swarm, sharing and analysing data as a group, would figure out the hard stuff.” Already, there are reports of AI being used this way but they are not corroborated, however it is easy to see a future in which fire control apps, linked to centralised drone swarms, will vastly simplify the application of massed drone effects on the battlefield.

A new era of warfare is being written in Ukraine

The internet means that observers like us currently have a ‘frontline’ seat from which to observe the development of new tactics. It is important that we continue to observe Ukraine’s revolutionary use of drones including the recent move from a defensive focus to the application of this technology in offensive operations. Ukraine’s sacrifices provide an opportunity for commentators and military professionals around the world to study and learn about this evolution.

Ben Morgan is TDBs military blogger. If you like this content and want to support it you can ‘Buy me a Coffee’