OPEN LETTER: To those who still believe the Russian sky is protected — 194 proofs to the contrary

Introduction: A letter addressed to the architects of a collapsing network

To the Russian strategists who built the layers

This letter is addressed to those who planned, deployed, and maintained the Russian integrated air defense network in occupied Ukraine and on the adjacent Russian territory. You built something impressive on paper: layered systems of S-400, S-300, Buk, Tor, and Pantsir, linked by a dense radar network, each layer protecting the next, each system covering the blind spots of its neighbor. It was an air deterrence architecture designed to make the sky impenetrable.

In 2026, that network has been struck 194 times. Since the beginning of the year alone. Since the creation of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces as a distinct branch of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on June 11, 2025, the total reaches 276 elements destroyed: 169 anti-aircraft missile and gun systems, 76 radar stations. Plus 426 mobile radars and 3,838 mobile electronic warfare systems. I am writing to tell you what these figures mean — and what they announce.

What I am and what I am not

I am a columnist. I am not a military officer, a defense strategist, or an intelligence officer. I do not have access to Ukrainian operations rooms or classified post-strike reports. What I have are verified public data, testimonies from Ukrainian commanders, and reports from organizations following this conflict in real time. And these data tell a story that Russian generals know better than I do — but that I will tell here, for those who have not yet read the figures closely.

The principle of layers, and why it no longer works

The logic of defense in depth

Russian air defense rests on a classic military principle: defense in depth, or "layers." Each system covers a specific radius and a specific altitude. The S-400, with an official range potentially reaching 400 km (frequently engaged up to 200 km), covers high-altitude, long-range threats. The S-300 covers similar but older threats. The Buk and Tor handle medium-altitude threats. The Pantsir protects the low layer. And the radars — mobile and fixed — bind it all together into a coherent detection and guidance network.

The principle is sound. Each layer makes the attacker's task more difficult. Each system protects its neighbor. A breach in one layer is compensated by the layers that follow. This is what the company commander of the Ukrainian 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment "Raid", using the call sign "Churchill," described to Euromaidan Press in June 2026: "In certain points on the front, the Russians are losing the concept of layered air defense." This assessment comes from someone actively working to destroy those layers, one by one.

When the layers become individual targets

The Ukrainian strategy consists precisely in exploiting this layered logic against itself. By targeting radars — the network's eyes — and mobile launchers — its fists — Ukrainian drone operators are not trying to break through Russian air defense. They are trying to hollow it out, to progressively widen the blind spots until safe aerial corridors appear. Kostiantyn Kryvolap, a former aeronautical test engineer at the Antonov design bureau, explained that the Russians have significantly reduced the number of available S-400 and S-300 systems under pressure from these strikes.

Each radar or launcher destroyed in occupied territories or in Crimea widens a "window" for subsequent deep strikes. This window allows Ukrainian aircraft to fly closer to targets and drop glide bombs on objectives they could not reach a year earlier. The drone campaign against air defense is not an end in itself — it is the prerequisite for a deep-strike capability that Ukraine is building in real time.

June 2026: 31 strikes in one month

The pace is accelerating

In June 2026 alone, the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces struck 31 elements of the Russian integrated air defense network. This is one of the most intense months since this branch was created. To put that figure in perspective: in a single month of June, Ukraine destroyed or damaged more Russian air defense systems than most countries hold in their entire national arsenals. This attrition rate is sustainable and growing.

Between June 27 and 29, 2026, operators continued targeting Russian energy infrastructure, fuel, and military logistics simultaneously. In occupied Crimea, the 1st Separate Unmanned Systems Center struck a Pantsir-S1 system, an ST-68 radar, and a 48Ya6-K1 Podlyok radar. In Crimea, the 412th Nemesis Brigade targeted railway fuel wagons. In the Zaporizhzhia region, a fuel depot and two Russian tanker trucks. In the Bryansk region, on Russian territory itself, the 413th Raid Brigade hit a locomotive supporting Russian military logistics.

Crimea as the central theater

Crimea occupies a central place in this campaign. The peninsula is the main southern logistics hub of Russia for supplying its forces in the occupied territories. It depends on passage through the Kerch Strait, ferries, and the land corridor through southern occupied Ukraine. Each radar destroyed in Crimea reduces the aerial coverage of these supply lines. Each launcher neutralized widens the window in which Ukrainian aircraft can operate over the Black Sea and southern occupied Ukraine.

Drones as doctrinal revolution

Forces created from scratch since June 2025

The most remarkable fact in this campaign is not only its effectiveness — it is its youth. The Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces have existed as a distinct branch of the Armed Forces only since June 11, 2025. In less than a year of existence, they have destroyed 276 air defense elements, struck 426 mobile radars, neutralized 3,838 mobile electronic warfare systems. These figures represent an offensive capability built in real time, on the basis of lessons learned in the field, without decades of institutional doctrine behind them.

The creation of this distinct branch is itself a major strategic decision. It recognizes that drones are no longer an accessory to the traditional military — they are a fully-fledged dimension of modern combat, requiring specialized doctrines, training, and command chains. Ukraine has made this institutional leap that most Western armies have not yet accomplished. This is a lesson for every general staff watching this conflict.

Fire Point and Ukrainian industrial power

Behind the drone operators, there is a Ukrainian military industry that emerged from urgency. The company Fire Point, which did not exist before the 2022 Russian invasion — it was then a film casting agency — is today one of Ukraine's largest military contractors. Its FP-1 and FP-2 drones, and its FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles, are reportedly responsible for approximately 60% of Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territory, according to co-founder Denys Shtilerman. Its modernized drones struck a refinery in Russia's Tyumen region, 2,070 km from the Ukrainian border, in June 2026.

Operation Ashan: another front in the drone offensive

1,180 targets across two phases

Alongside the air defense campaign, the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces conducted Operation Ashan, a two-phase campaign against Russian armored vehicles and artillery. The first phase destroyed more than 800 armored vehicles — tanks, personnel carriers, other armored units — "in just a few nights," according to Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. The direct result: the Russians conducted no mechanized offensive for six months after these strikes.

The second phase, named "ArtAshan," launched in June 2026, focused on Russian artillery in the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Starobilsk sectors. It struck 231 targets, destroyed 171 of them, and reduced Russian activity across the entire front line by 30 to 81% on the first day of strikes. These figures were verified by objective monitoring systems and intercepted communications.

A paradigm shift in ground warfare

Operation Ashan illustrates a fundamental paradigm shift: drones no longer serve only for reconnaissance or symbolic strikes. They have become a tactical force multiplier capable of halting mechanized offensives, systematically destroying enemy artillery, and altering the balance of forces across entire front sectors. This is no longer experimental drone warfare — it is proven operational doctrine.

Fire Point and missile defense: the next frontier

The Freyja system: intercepting ballistics for under a million dollars

But Fire Point does not stop at offense. In partnership with German radar manufacturer Hensoldt, the company is developing the Freyja system — a ballistic missile interceptor designed to engage at 25 km altitude for under $700,000 per shot. For comparison: one Patriot PAC-3 interceptor costs approximately $3.8 million. The cost reduction exceeds 80%. If this system reaches its announced performance levels, it will change the economics of missile defense.

Co-founder Shtilerman told Reuters: "If we can bring the cost under a million dollars, it will be a game-changer in air defense solutions." The company plans a production rate of three interceptors per day from August 2026 and a first ballistic missile interception test by the end of 2027. Co-founder Terekha posted on X a video of a test flight of the FP-7.X in June 2026 — "a fully controlled maneuvering flight."

Ukraine as a security provider, not merely a recipient

Shtilerman made a statement worth quoting in full: "Ukraine is no longer just a consumer of aid — it has become a provider of security solutions for all of Europe, and perhaps for the entire world." This claim, which would have seemed extravagant in 2022, is today defensible on the facts. Ukraine produces long-range drones that strike Russia at distances only major powers could reach yesterday. It is developing missile interceptors at costs lower than anything on the Western market.

What 276 systems destroyed means for Moscow

Systems that cannot be replaced quickly

To grasp the impact of 276 systems destroyed since June 2025, one must consider replacement lead times. One S-400 system represents years of industrial production and millions of dollars. Russia, under Western sanctions since 2022, has limited access to the advanced electronic components needed to produce these systems. Its factories are running at full capacity, but with lower-quality substitutes. Replacing 276 systems within a few months, while maintaining a presence across the entire front and defending Russian territory itself, likely exceeds available industrial capacity.

Russia has indeed relocated S-300 and S-400 systems toward Moscow following the latest mass strike on the capital. This defensive strategic choice — protecting the capital at the expense of the front — illustrates the real constraint. Each system moved toward Moscow is one fewer system above occupied Ukraine. It is a zero-sum game that Ukraine is progressively winning.

Attrition as a long-term strategy

Ukraine cannot militarily retake all occupied territories in a single offensive. Its human and material resources, despite Western support, are lower than Russia's in raw terms. Its strategy is therefore one of asymmetric attrition: use low-cost drones to destroy high-cost Russian systems, exhaust Russia's industrial capacity, progressively degrade Moscow's offensive and defensive capability to the point where maintaining the occupation becomes unsustainable. This strategy is slow. It is painful for Ukraine too. But it is coherent, and it is working.

What the destroyed radars open as possibilities

Glide bombs that reach farther

The direct operational consequence of destroying Russian radars and launchers is the widening of the airspace in which Ukrainian aviation can operate. Ukrainian aircraft can now "fly deeper and drop glide bombs on targets they could not have reached a year ago," according to analysis from Euromaidan Press. Ukraine also launched serial production of its first domestically produced guided glide bomb, the Vyrivniuvach, in June 2026.

This combination — airspace widened by radar destruction, glide bombs of domestic production — represents a qualitative step up in Ukrainian strike capability. It is not an instant transformation, but a progressive build-up of capabilities that, six to twelve months from now, could significantly shift the balance of strikes.

Long-range strikes deep into Russian territory

Simultaneously, the long-range strike campaign against Russian territory's interior is intensifying. In June 2026, at least 28 strikes targeted Russian oil infrastructure — refineries, depots, pipelines. These strikes reduced Russian gasoline production to historically low levels, forced Moscow to restrict domestic sales, and disrupted the logistics chains feeding the front. Refineries in the Urals and Western Siberia are now within reach of Ukrainian drones.

The implications for Ukraine's allies

Doctrinal lessons for NATO

What Ukraine has developed in offensive drones and air defense attrition is the richest body of military doctrine generated in a major conflict in decades. NATO member armies are progressively integrating these lessons into their own doctrines. The creation of unmanned systems units, the priority given to striking adversary radar and electronic warfare networks, the models of asymmetric attrition — all of this is reshaping Western military thinking in real time.

Fire Point's Freyja system is attracting the attention of European partners. Hensoldt (Germany), Thales (France), Leonardo (Italy), and Kongsberg (Norway) are all mentioned as potential partners for the radar and command-and-control systems. A transatlantic industrial collaboration between Ukraine and its allies to produce low-cost missile interceptors would be a major transformation of the European defense industrial landscape.

Support must not falter

Behind all these impressive figures — 194, 276, 3,838 — lies a reality that Western allies must not lose sight of: this campaign is possible because Ukraine still receives support in materials, munitions, financing, and intelligence from the West. If this support weakens — for political, budgetary, or fatigue-driven reasons — the pace of strikes will slow, the Russian layers will reform, and the sacrifices made since June 2025 will lose part of their strategic effect.

To Russian commanders: one thing to understand

The doctrine of erosion will not stop

I return to those this letter primarily addresses: the architects and operators of the Russian air defense network. You have seen the figures. You know what 194 strikes in six months mean for your capabilities. You know that the systems you moved to Moscow to defend the capital are systems you no longer have above Crimea and the Donbas. You know that every destroyed radar opens a corridor you cannot close without a replacement that your sanctions-constrained industry is struggling to supply.

What you may not have known is the speed at which Ukraine built this capability. The Unmanned Systems Forces are less than a year old. Fire Point had four years of existence. The doctrine of erosion, as it is being applied, improves with every strike, adapts to every countermeasure, learns from every failure. It will not stop.

What history will say about this choice

I close this section of the letter with a question I pose without rhetoric: what will history say of a war launched by a regime that believed it could conquer in a few days a country of 44 million people, and that four years later is watching its air defense network eroded by a branch of the opposing army that did not exist when the conflict began? This question deserves an honest answer from all those in Russia who supported, ordered, or simply stood by while this war was launched.

To the Russian people: a necessary distinction

The army is not the people

This letter is addressed to those who made the decisions, not to those who bore their consequences. There are in Russia citizens who did not want this war, families who lost sons in an invasion they never approved, soldiers sent to the front without an honest explanation of what they are fighting for. These people are not my adversaries — they are, in their own way, additional victims of the Putin regime. I make this distinction because it is real and because it matters for the future peace.

What I refuse is to let the institutional silence of generals, strategists, and bureaucrats mask the reality of what is happening in the field. 194 strikes in six months. 276 systems destroyed since June 2025. These figures do not lie. And the Russian people, like all peoples, deserve to know the truth about the war their government is waging in their name.

The response the West must maintain

Not letting ourselves be distracted from what matters

To my Western readers now: the figures from this campaign show that the Ukrainian strategy is working. It is slow, costly in human and material resources, and requires a patience that Western political culture — with its 24-hour news cycle — is not naturally inclined to sustain. But it is working. Maintaining support for Ukraine — in materials, munitions, financing, and intelligence — is not charity toward a country at war. It is an investment in the collective security of the West.

Every Russian air defense system destroyed by a Ukrainian drone is a system that will not be available to threaten NATO members. Every refinery struck in Russia is a liter of fuel less for tanks. Ukraine is fighting for itself — but it is also fighting, indirectly, for the values and security of the entire West. We cannot afford to falter now.

What the 276 strikes announce for what comes next

A turning point in the air war

The 276 air defense elements destroyed since June 2025 represent a turning point in the air war above Ukraine. The sky is not yet safe for Ukrainian aviation — but it is progressively more so than it was a year ago. Aerial corridors are opening. Ukrainian aircraft are flying deeper. Glide bombs are hitting targets at extended range. The trajectory is clear.

If this pace is maintained — and Ukrainian industrial capabilities and allied commitments suggest it can be — the air warfare balance will continue to shift in Ukraine's favor. This will not be a spectacular victory broadcast one evening on screens — it will be the sum of thousands of strikes, one layer at a time, until the point at which maintaining the occupation becomes militarily unsustainable for Moscow.

The Vyrivniuvach glide bomb: a name to remember

The launch of serial production of Ukraine's first domestically produced guided glide bomb, the Vyrivniuvach, in June 2026, is one of the least-covered but most important developments in this phase of the conflict. This weapon, produced on Ukrainian soil, combines the extended range made possible by the destruction of Russian radars with guided precision that reduces civilian casualties. It symbolizes Ukraine's trajectory: from a country that requested weapons, to a country that manufactures them, to a country that exports them to defend Europe.

Conclusion: 194, 276, and counting

What these figures really mean

This open letter began with two figures: 194 and 276. These are cold military numbers. Systems destroyed, radars neutralized, launchers eliminated. But behind each figure are Ukrainian drone operators who planned, executed, and risked their lives for these strikes. Engineers who developed the vehicles. Commanders who defined the targets. Soldiers holding the lines while the drones do their work.

A strategy that deserves to be supported

What this campaign demonstrates is that Ukraine has developed a coherent, effective, and sustainable strategy for progressively degrading the offensive and defensive capacity of Russia. This strategy deserves to be supported by its allies with the same coherence and effectiveness. No wavering, no political conditions, no "support fatigue." A firm line, maintained over time, until Moscow understands that continuing this war costs more than ending it.

What this letter cannot say

The limits of my position

I must name what this letter cannot say. I do not know Ukraine's operational plans for the coming weeks. I do not know which sectors will be prioritized, nor which Russian systems remain functional despite the reported attrition. The data I use are public and therefore incomplete. The reality on the ground is always more complex and brutal than the reports that emerge from it.

I also acknowledge that behind the figures of destroyed systems, there are Russian soldiers who died, who were wounded, who survived. This war has an enormous human cost on both sides of the lines. That cost does not make the Russian aggression less illegal, nor the Ukrainian resistance less legitimate. But it deserves to be named, even in an engaged open letter.

What I hope from this letter

I hope this letter will be read by those who wonder whether supporting Ukraine is worth it. These 194 strikes, these 276 systems — they are not propaganda. They are verifiable results of a coherent strategy. Ukraine is progressively winning the air battle. It is building a first-rate military industry. It is defending not only its territory but the principles on which the West claims to stand. Maintaining support for this effort is not an act of charity — it is an act of consistency with our declared values.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My sources and their limits

This open letter draws on verified public data, notably the United24 Media report of June 29–30, 2026 on the strikes by the Unmanned Systems Forces, the Euromaidan Press analysis of June 26, 2026 on the Russian air defense layer erosion strategy, the Militarnyi report of July 1, 2026 on Operation Ashan, and the Military Times article of June 25, 2026 on Fire Point. All quotations come from these sources. I have no unpublished independent sources.

My stated biases

I am openly supportive of Ukrainian resistance and consider the Russian invasion an illegal act of aggression contrary to international law. My analysis of the drone campaign is shaped by this conviction. I do not invent facts, but my interpretive framing is clearly pro-Ukrainian. This open letter is an exercise in engaged journalism, not a neutral military report.

Sources

Primary sources

United24 Media — Ukraine's Drone Force Is Punching Holes in Russia's Air Defense: 194 Hits This Year — June 30, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Russia built its air defense in layers. A Ukrainian commander says the drones are peeling them off one by one — June 26, 2026

Militarnyi — Ukraine Strikes Over 1000 Russian Armored Vehicles and Artillery Systems: Operation Ashan — July 1, 2026

Secondary sources

Kyiv Independent — Ukraine War Latest — July 2026

Euromaidan Press — Ukraine War Coverage — July 2026

Military Times — Ukraine's top strike-drone maker moves into ballistic missile defense — June 25, 2026