The ceasefire from May 9-11 generally held in the sense that there were no major attacks and no substantial battles, just drone hunting along the front line. Both sides used the break to rotate troops and reinforce positions. Then they got back to killing each other.
In the past seven days (roughly May 8-15), there have been no reports of large-scale, significant ground battles involving multiple vehicles (three or more armored vehicles/tanks in coordinated assaults) in the Russo-Ukraine War.
Before and after that window, there was limited action with minor changes in ground held. One of the better-documented took place in the Kharkiv region, on Friday, when Ukrainian forces, including the 129th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade, recaptured the village of Oradne in a deliberate assault. The was primarily an infantry-drone-artillery attack with the overall ground force about the size of a platoon. The Ukrainians claimed 56+ killed and more wounded. No outside confirmation outside Ukraine army-related sources, info probably is still coming in.
Right after the ceasefire ended, on May 12, reconnaissance drones from the 24th Mech Brigade “King Danylo” detected 20+ Russian infantry walking down a road, in broad daylight, near Chasiv Yar. Maybe it was an attack, maybe it was a group of soldiers that didn’t know the ceasefire had ended. Either way, the 24th hit the group with artillery, then mortars, then first-person-view (FPV) drones, then bomber drones. That ended Russian forward movement. Reportedly “only a few” were able to retreat. This all was confirmed by the drone unit RAROG, which carried out a lot of the strikes.
There were several reports that Russian paratroopers from 76th Guards Air Assault Division attempted pushes around Pokrovsk and were turned back with losses, but I don’t have details.
The picture overall is an effective Drone Wall. Robert Brovdi commander of the SBS/drone troops put out a video on Wednesday (May 13) saying that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) considers the drone wall effective out to 25 kilometers (15.5 miles), and that every drone team on the front has been given a quota of 10 Russian soldiers that need to be killed or wounded every month; if this quota is maintained then Russia will lose troops faster than it recruits them.
For those of you who like math, the implication is that the AFU has something like 3,500-4,000 tactical drone teams – this is effectively four to six guys, a couple of vehicles, and a basic load of 30-50 drones – operating on the front. This is short-range operations only. The implication of THAT, fairly obviously, is that the SBS alone have something like the equivalent of A NATO DIVISION (i.e., 14,000-24,000 soldiers) devoted just to tactical drone operations.
That’s not counting the organic drone units that are subordinate to the corps and the brigades, nor is it counting the “specialist” drone units that work on targets deeper behind the lines, or that specialize in hunting Russian drones.
Taken together, conservatively, Ukraine’s drone forces, I bet, number at least 30,000 men. That is bigger than the entire ground forces of the Kingdom of Sweden.
Which, neatly I think, segues to the final factoid of this section, which is that NATO just had a big exercise, run by Sweden, and two Ukrainian drone teams got invited to play adversaries/red force. Yes, the Ukrainian drones were so effective that they had to reset the entire exercise because all the NATO troops, who are unfamiliar with drones, got notionally wiped out. Three times in two days of training. Here are details, but the really frightening thing is, a year ago, at an earlier exercise in Estonia, the exact same thing happened. Fast forward to now, and based on how they train, NATO has learned nothing about tactical drones.
Russia bombards Ukraine
The long-range attacks restarted immediately after the ceasefire. On Wednesday, during the day, the Russians sent 753 drones, a near one-day record (948 drones on March 24, 2026). In general, the Russian concept was to attack western Ukraine, targeting Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Odesa, Lutsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Volyn.
There were two drone streams, one from Crimea and one from western Russia. The launches took place over most of the day, in daylight. Some reports put the total count of drones at 852; I can’t reconcile that with the Ukrainian Air Force figures.
Another tactical wrinkle was that instead of flying around Kyiv and all its air defenses from the south, the northern stream paralleled the Belarus border to get westward. Also, some drones appear to have bypassed Ukrainian air defenses by overflying Moldova. (Which is neutral).
First reports of bombers taking off and moving to missile launch positions started in the evening and continued past midnight.
They seemed mostly to head for police and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) offices, rail infrastructure, and energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s national railroad reported 23 individual strikes against rail infrastructure: tracks, stations, and locomotives.
Regarding the drones, it seems the Ukrainians were ready; 710 claimed shot down or diverted, which works out to a 94% kill rate.
For comparison, on May 8, a pair of wayward Ukrainian drones flew across Belarus, entered Latvian/NATO air space, were apparently not detected at all by NATO’s high-speed/low drag/”exquisite” air defense systems, were certainly not intercepted by anything, and crashed of their own accord near an oil storage facility. That’s a 0% interception rate. Defense Minister Andris Sprūds resigned two days later.
Shorter-range strikes hit the Dnipropetrovsk region – over the night and early morning 30 attacks, eight people dead. This was a mix of drones, shelling and aerial bombs. Eleven wounded.
This was all on Wednesday. After midnight, on Thursday morning, the Russian missiles started arriving.
Where I was, the first salvo came in at around 3:30 a.m., followed by another at 3:40 a.m. I observed intercepts high in the sky. Auto-cannon tracers arced over the river to the southeast and due south of the city. One strike hit my neighborhood – it was loud.
Elsewhere in Kyiv, it was a lot worse; one cruise missile collapsed part of a nine-story apartment building in the Darnitsa region. There were 27 (?) dead, 31 injured per counts on Thursday evening. Some 30+ were excavated from building debris. By evening, the Russian news was saying the entire strike was faked by Ukraine to harm Russia’s reputation.
The Air Force came out with these counts by 9 a.m.: Air defense forces shot down 41 missiles and 652 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), broken down to:
- 0 out of 3 Kh-47 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles (launched from Lipetsk region)
- 12 out of 18 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles (from Bryansk and Kursk region)
- 29 out of 35 Kh-101 cruise missiles (Volgograd region)
- 652 out of 675 strike UAVs (Bryansk, Kursk, Orel, Rostov, Crimea)
The Russian milblogger crowd was quite stoked about the massed attack and some pretty much reversed last week’s moping about how the war will go on forever and how those ungrateful Ukrainians are too stupid to realize they’re defeated. There was some cheering about the apartment building that got leveled in Kyiv – according to the Russians the Ukrainian civilians deserved what they got by not revolting against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In a psychologically related incident, short-range Russian drone operators on Thursday attacked and damaged two UN vehicles in Kherson; this patrol had supposedly been agreed upon by both sides. No one hurt, both armored Toyotas pretty beat up. The UN in response…wait for it….no, really, wait for it…I’m serious, this is going to be worth it, wait for it…in an official statement, the attack was “absolutely unacceptable.”
In the real world, as always, the critical data points are Russian ballistic missiles available and Ukrainian interceptor missiles available. The latter is a Ukrainian state secret, although everyone from Zelensky on down is saying stocks are already critically short, and judging by the smoke trails above my neighborhood early Thursday morning, whatever the stocks were, they are now eight less.
In April, Russia, by my count, seems to have launched 60-65 ballistic missiles against Ukraine, of which some appear to have been inaccurate S-400s. Now it is the middle of May, and the Russians have launched 18 ballistic missiles. Time will tell, but the trend so far seems to point to falling counts of Russian ballistic missiles. The semi-government Militarnyi platform, on Thursday (May 14), published an article coming generally to the same conclusion, to wit, Russian ballistic missile launch counts are falling, probably because of Ukrainian strikes against ballistic missile component factories.
Ukraine bombards Russia
On the evening of Tuesday, May 12 – the first day of normal operations after the three-day ceasefire so as to allow Russia to hold a parade in Red Square – Ukraine’s inimitable drone forces, the SBS, led off their daily report of strike activity with this less-than-conventional-military declaration:
“The parades are over. OPEN FIRE!”
From Wednesday-Thursday, May 13–15, Ukraine’s SBS forces unleashed what possibly has been the most damaging 72 hours of systematic drone bombardment of Russian assets by Ukrainian drones of the entire war. There certainly have been more spectacular attacks like the Spiderweb operation inside Russia or the drone-missile bait-and-switch tactics that sank the Moskva cruiser. But in terms of relentless destruction of Russian air defenses, so there can be relentless destruction of Russian energy infrastructure, I can’t think of a half-week that’s comparable.
The festivities kicked off on Wednesday, May 13, with raids on the Taman Naftogaz terminal – so near the Kerch Strait, and the Astrakhan Gas Processing Plant – so near the mouth of the Volga. My impression is that the Ukrainians launched close to 300 drones, mostly propeller.
The Astrakhan facility is one of the largest gas chemical complexes in the world. I read it is a major producer of sulfur for explosives and provides more than two-thirds of Russian production for the needs of the military-industrial complex. The Taman Neftegaz oil terminal is a critical LNG and oil transshipment terminal by the mouth of the Kerch Strait, so, supposedly a high priority for Russian air defenses.
After the Ukrainian drones left, Taman tanks with gas condensate distillate were burning, lump sulfur warehouses were broken up, an oil products warehouse took hits, and one of the processing units was rammed by a drone. There is some evidence that two shadow tankers tied up at a wharf were hit as well. At the Astrakhan GPP, there were fires, but I have less info. Some reports said close to 300 Ukrainian drones were used in this strike.
But that was not all. That was just the southern strike of the night. In the Volga region, Bashkorstan, near UF, the Nurino Transneft oil terminal was set on fire. That’s three major energy infrastructure facilities, inside Russia, hit and damaged – possibly severely – in a single night.
Nor was THAT all. The northern strike hit Yaroslavl, set the oil refinery there on fire. One night, four major energy production facilities were torched. By Ukraine. In Russia.
On Thursday, May 14, the Ukrainian drone troops took a relative breather and they “only” scored hits on a big air defense radar in the Donetsk region, an anti-aircraft missile battery in the Luhansk region, a headquarters in the Donetsk region, and a “communications center” in the Zaporizhzhia region. There was a time when this would have been seen as a major blow, demonstrating Ukraine isn’t crushed. These days, the pace of operations counts as a light night for the SBS.
On Friday, May 15, it was the turn of the Ryazan oil refinery, but not just – as the Ukrainians launched what I suspect was the biggest drone attack into Russia of the entire war. It certainly was one of the most effective.
In Ryazan, the night attack touched off anti-aircraft fire that looked like Star Wars with tracers everywhere and anti-aircraft missiles getting launched into the mix, as the Liuty drones bore in. I don’t have a hard count of how many aircraft went in, but there had to be dozens. Participating drone units were 1st SBS, 9th Bat. Kairos, 414th Bde (Ptakhi Madyara), 413th Bde (Reyd), plus special forces (SSO) and defense intelligence (HUR).
The rest of the world (except Russia) thinks the AFU just flies a few drones around. Meanwhile, it seems like the Ukrainians coordinated an effective, combined air strike with probably six flying units participating, to hit a well-defended target about 500 kilometers (311 miles) away. This would have been an impressive military achievement even if it hit nothing, but it did.
Multiple hits, giant fires, and Ukraine’s General Staff took credit. Four dead and at least 28 Russian civilians injured from at least two drone strikes; Ukraine’s General Staff did not mention, never mind take credit for that. This is Russia’s fourth-biggest oil refinery.
The one in Perm, that was torched last week, I read, has finally stopped burning, but it’s not producing, nor is it likely to soon.
Same night, more Ukrainian drones flew to Kaspiysk, yes, the Caspian Sea, and hit a Russian navy minesweeper and a missile boat. Also, on the same night, yet more Ukrainian drones flew to a south Azov Sea resort village called Morskoe, Russian Federation, and burnt a seaplane and a search helicopter. Also, a cargo ship carrying stolen grain in Berdyansk was hit, and also, more air defense systems were hit, one in Luhansk and one in Crimea.
It’s worth a brief aside on what’s been happening to Russian naval assets. Drone raids on Sevastopol on April 18-19 and April 29 targeted amphibious landing ships under repair – the Yamal and the Nikolay Filchenkov – with the Yamal hit twice. On April 30, Ukraine struck two vessels guarding the Kerch Bridge at the mouth of the Strait: the Russian intelligence (FSB) patrol boat Sobol and the anti-sabotage boat Grachonok. On May 2-3, a Karakurt-class missile corvette was hit at Primorsk on the Baltic. On May 7, another Karakurt was struck at its base in Kaspiysk on the Caspian. Then on May 15-17, Ukrainian drones were back at Kaspiysk, this time hitting a Svetlyak-class patrol boat – a different vessel, not the May 7 Karakurt. Most countries at war would not be happy with their navy taking that kind of punishment in the space of a month.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirmed the Ryazan oil refinery strike and took credit for the hit of the missile boat and minesweeper on the Caspian Sea. The report said fire was observed. Russian independent news reports said one of the ships had about 50 sailors on board, of whom 10 were seriously injured. Not a peep from the Russian Defense Ministry. Their position seems to be that the Kaspiysk strike never took place.
This was just one night of Ukrainian drones flying into Russia-controlled territory and blowing things up.
I think Crimea is going to get cut off, just not the way we thought
This is a speculative essay, not news, so if you’re just wanting the latest updates, skip this.
But if you ask me, and want to take a look into the futures, I think we can say “Don’t look now, but the Ukrainians have figured out a way to cut off Crimea from the rest of Russia. If you pay attention, you can see them doing it already. Seriously.”
This is like in April 2022 when the Ukrainians demonstrated they could hit a Russian warship with missiles at 200+ kilometers (124+ miles). It was reasonable to predict, as this review did, that that capacity would eventually make Sevastopol untenable for Russian naval operations. It took about 18 months.
The veterans among you probably remember back in May 2023, there was a general opinion in the West that, hopefully, an AFU armed with NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles would punch through to Crimea in a ground offensive from the Zaporizhzhia region, because NATO thought that was how to end the war quickly. Even people with little knowledge of geography could see, once they actually looked at a map of Ukraine, that Russian logistic lines into Crimea could be vulnerable. But that plan failed, Ukraine was defeated, and the Russians won.
Before I get to the present, however, hearken back to May 2025, which fewer of you probably remember. Among the news of the time was that the Russians had, following their victory in the Zaporizhzhia region, been building a spiffy new direct rail line running Taganrog-Mariupol-Melitopol, along the north Azov Sea shore. The idea was to nail down Russian control of the area with a continuous rail line connecting Crimea with the Russian mainland overland rather than by a bridge over the Kerch Strait.
Construction by mid-May had gotten to the point where the Russians were running fuel trains regularly from Volnovakha and talking about passenger service.
That Russian idea of a Trans-Tavria rail link failed, as a few of you may recall, because the Ukrainian special forces and HUR effectively waited for the freight trains to start moving regularly, and then they started ambushing the Russian trains with drones. One of the most spectacular attacks, on about May 23-24, 2025, caught a fuel train near a village called Novobodhanivka (47.0913824, 35.3175684), torched it, and plugged up the line. (Single-track). When the Russians sent repair trains to clear the right-of-way, the special operators blew them up too. I did a collage about that.
By late 2025, the Russians were reduced to only being able to run armored freight trains from Volnovakha to Melitopol by an existing route a lot closer to Ukrainian lines, and then infrequently.
Fast forward to this month. The rail line is still out, but now Russian milbloggers are complaining about a new development: Now the Ukrainian drones are patrolling the Melitopol-Mariupol highway, and hunting trucks. The reasons this is happening now are well-known and should be obvious: since mid-2025, the Ukrainians have up-scaled both the volume of strikes on the Russian immediate rear area and military logistics.
How this happened is equally clear: Since mid-2025, the drone forces have received several new strike drones that are very effective in the 50-150 kilometer (31-93 mile) range envelope (Bulava, RAM-2X, and Blyskavka), a solid reconnaissance drone that operates persistently in that envelope (Shark), bigger numbers of all those weapons, and probably most important, last fall the SBS forces took over most medium-range strike management from the special ops/HUR/SBU.
In other words, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi got put in charge of the operation, so instead of sneak-deaky cool guy management, the operation is run like a business with everyone pulling his weight or out the door, and clear performance requirements. If you look at how the SBS is running strike operations, very often you find that there are logical, practical reasons for decisions made. I flagged Azov Brigade’s drone unit flying strike and observation missions over Mariupol – a place Azov knows intimately from having fought there since 2014. I contend this didn’t happen by accident.
Somehow, Ukraine’s drone force leadership decided those pilots needed to be operating there. Now that same leadership is thinking about how to shut down road traffic in the Tavria steppe (i.e. in between Mariupol and Crimea).
On the other side of the war, last several weeks, the Russian milbloggers have been complaining loudly that among the several worrying trends in progress at the moment one of the most concerning is that the Melitopol-Mariupol highway – I have driven the M14 more times than I care to remember and so have several long-time readers of this blog – is now permanently under Ukrainian drone observation and trucks are being hit.
To be accurate, the road isn’t shut down yet; some loads still do get through. But last month, there were no attacks at all. This isn’t Ukrainian propaganda, it’s pretty much all the Russian milbloggers: Romanov, Rybar, Adekvatniy Kharkovchan, Maxim Kalashnikov.
Implications?
Well, technically, nothing yet. But – if you look at the map, and the performance of the SBS so far, and the probable direction of Ukrainian drone production in the future, and Russian air defense capacity to stop a sustained Ukrainian drone effort to hit a high value target in Russia (*cough-Ryazan*) it’s very, very difficult to imagine a future in which Russian vehicle traffic will be able to drive freely from Mariupol and Russia to Crimea along the north Azov Sea coast.
It’s hard to see any other outcome, except, Ukrainian medium-range drones dominating the M-14 and the spur to Crimea (the E105) will inevitably shut down that route. It is an obvious target, we can see them working in this direction, the Ukrainians have demonstrated they have the technology and they know how to use it effectively, and the Russians demonstrably cannot prevent the Ukrainians from making more drones.
At the pace the Ukrainians work, and accounting for weather and the rest of the war, a conservative estimate is that a lockdown of Crimea’s northern supply routes will be effective in six to nine months. It could be faster.
It’s not just about Crimea. This isn’t just the main supply route for Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia and the Kherson region that would be in jeopardy as well. Once the northern supply route to Crimea falls under effective Ukrainian drone interdiction – and I’m saying it looks to me like not “if,” but “when” – then the Ukrainians will move Heaven and Earth to destroy the Kerch bridge. Already, they’ve just about demolished the ferries. They hit Taman port on Wednesday.
My guess, if there is a Ukrainian plan to WIN the war, this is it: Use drones to dominate approaches to Crimea, occupied Kherson, and occupied Zaporizhzhia regions, and then intensify that dominance so that the Russian military in those places cannot be supplied by land.
One cannot say, for sure, that this plan will work. But absolutely, one also cannot say it for sure will fail.
Certainly, it is still possible to find people who will argue the Ukrainians are too disorganized and un-Western, or un-Russian, to think that far ahead and implement a plan like that.
All I can say to that is, look at the war so far.
Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.