Putin thought that he could terrorize Ukraine.
A drone strike against Kyiv shattered a cultural landmark and killed yet more civilians.
Sadly, this sort of thing is nothing new for the war in Ukraine.
But Ukraine wasn’t about to take any of it lying down.
A blitz came in response.
Instant, brutal, and spread over multiple days, Ukraine’s drones struck in Russia, Crimea, and the occupied territories.
Putin wants to kill civilians.
But Ukraine is focused on taking out the strategic targets that will win the war, and its blitz set Russia on fire.
Ukraine has been forced to absorb far too many of Russia’s drone and missile strikes over the past few weeks.
According to some reports inn the week leading up to July 3 alone, Russia unleashed 1,371 missiles and drones at Ukraine in what was one of its largest weeks of strikes yet.
The onslaught came in the wake of a few weeks where Russia had slightly slowed down, with the rumor being that it was saving itself for a week in which it would launch a much larger barrage.
That week came.
The night of July 1 into July 2 saw Russia strike Kyiv hard.
496 long-range drones were launched, along with 74 missiles, and they struck 28 sites in Ukraine’s capital.
The attack was devastating.
At least 30 people were killed, with more than 90 being injured, prompting Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to repeat his calls for Ukraine’s allies to provide the Patriot missiles that they have promised so Ukraine can stop Russia’s missiles in their tracks.
Zelenskyy has a point.
This July 1 attack on Kyiv came in the wake of another, half a month before, that was devastating to Ukraine.
This blitz on Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine killed at least 11 people, four in Ukraine’s capital alone.
But it also destroyed a cultural center, showcasing Putin’s callous disregard for the country that he continues to hit with strikes.
The 11th-century Dormition Cathedral, which is part of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, came under fire.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site and a place of worship for many in Kyiv, the cathedral was left with a massive hole in one side and flames that were visible on its roof following a Ukraine-wide strike that included 611 drones and 70 missiles.
This is Putin’s strategy.
Kill civilians throughout Ukraine in terrifying drone and missile strikes.
Russia doesn’t care about precision.
Hitting military targets is a bonus.
All that Putin wants to do is wreak havoc against civilians in the war that he started.
These two brutal attacks couldn’t go unanswered.
Ukraine knew it.
And in response, it has unleashed a multi-day blitz as payback for both of these strikes on Kyiv, as well as for the attacks on the rest of Ukraine that Russia continues to carry out.
Refineries, military infrastructure, annexed Crimea, and the occupied territories all burn following days of long-range strikes that saw Ukraine deliver a pointed message to Putin: You hit civilians, we take out strategic targets.
We’ll start with the refineries.
That’s where Ukraine does some of the most war-changing damage.
Just under two weeks following Russia’s brutal strike against Kyiv and its cathedral, Ukraine unleashed drones on the Slavyansk and Yaroslavl oil refineries.
In both cases, Ukraine highlighted its long-range capabilities.
The first of those refineries is 300 kilometers away from Ukraine, with the second being 700 kilometers away.
At Slavyansk, a massive fire broke out in the refinery, and drone debris also caused damage to some buildings.
In Yaroslavl, roads in and out of the city were closed down, as Ukraine’s drones made their mark.
More was coming.
On July 1, Ukraine’s drones targeted the Ufa oil refinery for the second time in a week.
This refinery is some 1,300 kilometers from Ukraine, Zelenskyy reported in an X post, and the strike did what Ukraine’s drones do best – cause a large fire at a facility filled with flammable materials.
With this attack, Ukraine took out one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants, which are used in many of the weapons and vehicles that Putin sends to the frontlines.
Still, Ukraine wasn’t done.
Russia’s second Kyiv strike came on the same day that Ufa was targeted for the second time, and revenge was in order.
The Kstovo oil refinery in Nizhny Novgorod was chosen as the target.
July 2 saw Ukraine hit the refinery so hard that it damaged the main AVT-6 primary crude distillation unit at the plant.
This single unit accounts for 53% of the processing capacity of a refinery that processes 15 million tons of crude oil.
It’s now down, along with the AVT-5 unit that was responsible for another 25% of the Kstovo plant’s processing capacity.
Kstovo has been shut down.
It may be weeks before Russia can get it back online.
And that’s the precise problem that Putin absolutely doesn’t need right now.
His cruel targeting of Ukraine’s civilians in the attacks on Kyiv is tragic, and a clear war crime.
But Ukraine responds by keeping its eyes on the prize.
By taking out Russian oil, Ukraine knows that it can wear out the Russian war machine, restrict cash flow into the Kremlin’s coffers, and deliver constant reminders to the Russian people that the war their president started is far from over, all without directly targeting those people.
Russian oil refining is a field of destruction.
The trio of attacks we’ve reported on so far is just the beginning.
In a July 6 report, NewsSky delivered some interesting numbers.
It reports that Ukraine has launched 194 strikes against Russian oil refineries during the first six months of 2026, which is 11 times more than the number of similar attacks that Ukraine launched during the same period in 2025.
For context, this is an average of a little over 32 refinery strikes every single month of 2026, which tells us that Ukraine hasn’t just ramped up its targeting of Russian oil.
It has made fires in the refineries a daily occurrence in Russia.
The Ufa and Kstovo strikes only add to the numbers, as Ukraine follows a course of repeatedly hitting the same refineries to ensure that Russia isn’t able to get anything running at full capacity again.
And sometimes, as we saw at Kstovo, Ukraine strikes with such deadly precision that an entire refinery needs to suspend operations.
May alone was a record month for Ukraine.
NewsSky reports that 16 successful hits on Russian refineries were recorded during that month, which it claims is more than we saw in the entire year of 2025.
That’s a somewhat spurious claim, as Ukraine ramped up its refinery campaign during the latter half of that year.
However, it’s the hits that matter here.
Russian air defenses are being overworked and overwhelmed by Ukraine’s drones.
And again, we see it in the numbers.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claims that the country’s air defenses shot down 14,195 Ukrainian drones in May, followed by 17,832 in June.
These numbers are insane.
They’re more than twice, and in June’s case, close to triple the number of drones that Ukraine unleashed in January and February.
And, of course, we know that Russia likes to fudge its interception numbers.
So many of Ukraine’s strikes are credited to “drone debris,” as Russia tries to act as though its air defenses deal with everything.
They don’t.
The fires at the refineries prove it.
Russia’s people are starting to feel the pain.
Mass fuel shortages caused by refinery shutdowns and a Ukrainian middle-range campaign against Russian fuel trucks are wreaking havoc on Russia.
The shortage runs deep.
United24 Media reports that restrictions on gasoline sales are already in place in more than 40 Russian regions, and that number is only going to grow as Ukraine keeps up its refinery campaign.
Russian crude oil refining collapsed by 25% in June compared to the same month in 2025, reaching a low point that hasn’t been seen in two decades.
Gasoline production dropped by 17%.
A third of Russia’s refining now sits idle due to Ukraine’s drones, and prices at the pumps in June rose by 20% year-on-year.
This is Ukraine’s revenge for Putin’s strikes against civilians.
Russia’s people feel the pain without being struck by missiles and drones.
Every refusal at the pumps, every time they have to scrape together a few more rubles that they don’t have, and every time they’re told to stay in their homes as Ukraine’s drones fly to yet another refinery is a reminder of the war.
Ukraine’s revenge blitzes for what Russia has been doing in Kyiv were brutal in the military sense.
They destroyed strategic targets and are starving Russia of the entire lifeblood of Putin’s war.
The more oil burns, the less money the Kremlin can make from taxing the revenue made on a product that no longer exists.
But if you think that Ukraine’s revenge for Russia’s Kyiv strikes ended with the continuation of an existing campaign, you’re sorely mistaken.
At least 15 civilians in Ukraine are dead due to Russia’s attacks.
Dozens more are injured.
And Ukraine made Russia pay by not only targeting oil, but striking everything else that makes it possible for Putin to wage his war.
But before we get to all of that, this is a reminder that you’re watching The Military Show.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s the perfect time to hit the button and ring the notification bell.
The fires raging in yet more refineries aren’t the only blazes that Russia is being forced to put out.
During the days of refinery revenge that Ukraine unleashed against Russia, it also struck military manufacturing facilities all over the country.
June 27 saw Ukraine rain devastating Flamingo FP-5 missiles on the Titan-Barrikday plant, which is in the Russian city of Volgograd.
These missiles, which can travel around 3,000 kilometers and pack a 1,150-kilogram warhead, have been a destructive addition to Ukraine’s long-range arsenal.
Late June proved why, as the Flamingoes tore through a plant that is responsible for building artillery systems and other special military equipment.
Again, we see the genius in Ukraine’s response to Putin’s brutality.
If Russia is going to kill civilians in Kyiv, Ukraine is going to make it so that Russian soldiers on the ground die faster because they don’t have the weapons that they need.
Three days later, Ukraine was at it again.
Still furious about Russia’s cathedral attack, Ukraine sent drones to a missile plant in Penza, which is responsible for producing the components used in Russian missile launchers.
Take out the components, and Russia can’t fire missiles.
At least, that’s the logic, and it’s something that Ukraine could bring to bear with repeated attacks on this plant and others like it.
July 3 saw a more direct revenge attack for Russia’s July 1 and July 2 attack on Kyiv, as Ukraine’s drones rained down on an energy facility in Belgorod, which builds equipment that is used in Russian power stations.
And as all of this was happening, The Sun reports that Ukraine’s drones also struck around a dozen power substations in the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Those types of attacks aren’t stopping.
A July 5 report in The Kyiv Independent says that Ukraine followed up with another wave of power substation attacks, taking out 16 and causing blackouts all across the peninsula in 48 hours of attacks that also destroyed ammunition depots, bridges, and targeted a Crimean airfield.
It just doesn’t stop.
As Putin cowers away in one of his bunkers, terrified that the next Ukrainian drone could target him instead of a refinery or military facility, Ukraine just unleashes more and more.
This is true revenge.
No attacks in isolation.
Just a constant stream of drones and missiles taking out targets all over Russia and the occupied territories.
Putin the terrorizer is now the man that is living in terror, and every blackout or fuel restriction that Ukraine causes is one step closer to Russia’s people turning against their leader.
Let’s come back to Crimea for a moment.
So much of what we’ve discussed in this video served as a powerful prelude to what was to come in Crimea.
As Russia burned in revenge for the Kyiv strikes, Ukraine was preparing to send a message that it has not forgotten about the isolation strategy that is slowly loosening Russia’s grip on the annexed peninsula.
We’ve already covered a handful of the Crimea strikes that followed Russia’s second
Kyiv attack.
But we haven’t done those strikes justice.
Ukraine unleashed a Crimean slaughter.
That airbase we mentioned was Hvardiiske, and Euromaidan Press reveals more details about why it matters.
The base is used to provide logistics and maintenance for Russia’s various aviation units, the outlet says.
In other words, Russia’s combat sorties from Crimea don’t happen if bases like this aren’t functioning the way they’re supposed to.
Oh, and Hvardiiske isn’t the only airfield that Ukraine struck in its flurry of revenge attacks.
The Belbek base was also targeted in a June 25 raid, and Ukraine achieved something special there.
A Ukrainian drone scored a direct hit on a Russian MiG-29 fighter jet at that base, with Ukraine only publishing the footage in the wake of its July strikes on the Crimean Peninsula.
That footage mirrors so much of what we’ve seen before.
We get the view from the drone as it approaches.
The Russian fighter jet, uncovered and unprotected, comes into view.
Then, everything goes blank.
That’s our sign that Ukraine’s drone scored a direct hit and exploded as it contacted the MiG-29.
Well, Russia, that’s one more platform you use to launch missiles and glide bombs that has gone down the tubes.
As for the bridges, Ukraine’s drones scored direct hits on a pair of bridges in the Donetsk oblast.
One spanned the Hruzkyi Yalanchyk River near Huselnykove, with the other taking out a bridge crossing the Kalmius River near Staromarivka.
Both are used by the Russian military to transport soldiers, ammo, weapons, and military supplies.
What does this have to do with Crimea when the strikes happened so far away? It’s all about Ukraine’s Logistics Lockdown program.
Ukraine is isolating Crimea by taking out the logistical arteries that run through the occupied territories.
These bridges would have been used by trucks on the way toward Crimea or away from it and into other regions of occupied Ukraine.
Now, they’re gone.
Just like so many other bridges before them.
Add the 16 Crimean substations that we mentioned into the mix, which themselves were just 16 of 37 energy facilities that Ukraine struck in the occupied regions between July 1 and July 5, and the revenge for Kyiv was almost complete.
Ukraine just added the destruction of a trio of ammunition depots in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson as the explosive cherry on top of a strike sundae that it shoved right down Putin’s throat.
What we see here is the expansion of the Crimean isolation campaign.
Ukraine is still focusing on the peninsula, of course.
But it’s now cutting off logistical arteries deeper into the southern and eastern occupied territories, making it even harder for Putin to keep his soldiers supplied on the front lines.
Again, this is Ukraine’s form of revenge.
Russia hits civilians.
Ukraine destroys the Russian war machine.
We would like to tell you that the sheer scale of Ukraine’s revenge strikes is enough to make Russia’s leader think twice about unleashing more attacks against Kyiv.
But Putin is desperate, which makes him dangerous.
As his troops fail to make real progress on the ground, the only effective weapon that Russia has left in its arsenal is its long-range stockpile.
Sadly, July 6 saw Russia respond to Ukraine’s revenge with yet another attack on Kyiv.
The second strike in just four days has killed at least 15 people, The Kyiv Independent reports.
Five of the 15 were children, and they died due to a Russian hell storm of 68 missiles and 351 drones.
Zelenskyy has repeated his call – Ukraine needs more Patriot missile interceptors.
But for Putin, this isn’t the showcase of Russian strength that he thinks it is.
This is desperation.
Putin knows that Ukraine is going to strike back.
It’s already proven that it will with its revenge attacks throughout late June and into early July.
By the way, those June attacks were part of a month-long onslaught that saw Ukraine destroy or damage 172 Russian defense industry targets and fuel facilities, along with almost 3,000 other military targets.
So, Putin knows what Russia’s attacks on Kyiv cost his military.
But he can’t stop.
He has no other choice.
As tragic as these attacks are, they are as much a provocation for Ukrainian revenge as they are a way to terrorize Ukraine in 2026.
Ukraine has already warned Putin.
On June 26, Euronews reported that Zelenskyy has approved a 40-day operation to be conducted by the State Security Service, which is designed to pressure Putin into ending his war.
That operation will include both long and middle-range “sanctions,” as Zelenskyy calls them, and it has already led Russian puppet authorities in Crimea to declare a state of emergency on the peninsula.
What this 40-day campaign means for Russia is simple: So much more is coming.
The drone and missile strikes we’ve reported on in this video are part of Ukraine’s campaign.
Through to the end of July, we’re going to see a lot more where they came from.
Russia can’t do anything about them.
Putin knows it, which is why all he has left is to terrorize in the hope that they will stop.
But now, Russia’s leader has been reduced to such a pitiful state that he has accepted that these strikes are going to happen, and all he can do now is try to manipulate the narrative.
As the Institute for the Study of War points out, Putin is now trying to use Ukraine’s long-range strikes as the justification for Russia’s frontline offensives and the spiraling costs of the war he started.
These excuses aren’t being made to the West.
Putin is using them to try to convince Russia’s own people that what he is doing is necessary.
The hypocrisy leaks from every one of Putin’s pores.
But the manipulation won’t work.
All that Russia’s people will see is Ukraine’s revenge.
Refineries will burn, fuel will disappear, military facilities will be shattered, and Russia will continue to struggle on the ground.
Ukraine’s flurry of strikes between the end of June and the beginning of July was revenge for what Russia did in Kyiv.
But the true revenge will be the victory that this non-stop destruction of the Russian war machine delivers.
Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign is impressive enough.
But when you add FPV and middle-range drone strikes into the mix, it becomes clear just how much of a problem Putin has on his hands.
We’ll give you the headline – 800,000 verified targets struck in the first six months of 2026.
If you want to find out how Ukraine did it, why this matters, and what comes next, then check out our video.
And if you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to The Military Show and ring the notifications bell to see more of our coverage of Ukraine’s devastating long-range strike campaign.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
