REPORT: Forty days of fire: Zelensky's pressure operation targeting the nerves of Russia's war

REPORT: Forty days of fire: Zelensky's pressure operation targeting the nerves of Russia's war

Introduction: Zelensky declares war on Russia's economy

A president who seizes the strategic initiative

In late June 2026, Volodymyr Zelensky publicly announced the launch of a 40-day pressure operation — not on the front lines, not in the trenches of the Donbas, but at the heart of the infrastructure fueling Russia's war machine. Refineries, fuel depots, logistics hubs, deep military installations. The target is as much economic as military, and the message is clear: Ukraine is no longer simply holding the line — it is striking, and striking far.

This public announcement is not accidental. Zelensky chose to communicate about this operation because he wants it known — by his allies, who need to understand that Ukraine is taking strategic initiatives, and by Putin, who must know that forty days of strikes are on the way. This is political communication fully integrated into military strategy, a hallmark of the Ukrainian president since the start of the war.

The backdrop: four years of resistance and innovation

To grasp what the 40-day operation represents, it must be placed in the continuum of four years of war. Ukraine resisted where no one expected it to. It absorbed massive strikes against its electrical grid, its cities, its civilians. It lost territory, retook some, ceded more. But it never stopped innovating, adapting, finding new ways to impose a rising cost on Russia. The 40-day operation is the latest chapter in this saga of creative resilience.

What is new in 2026 is the scale and coherence of the strategy. Deep strikes on Russian refineries are no longer isolated incidents — they are part of a deliberate, publicly articulated plan, executed with the discipline of a planned military campaign. This coherence is what makes the 40-day operation particularly significant on the strategic level.

Days 1 to 10: the first strikes that define the doctrine

Moscow, twice in one week: the Kapotnya refinery targeted

In the opening days of the operation, Ukraine chose a target that was both symbolic and strategic: the Kapotnya refinery in the southern district of Moscow. First raid on June 16, 2026, with a fire visible for kilometers from the Russian capital. Second raid two days later, on June 18, this time hitting the ELOU-AVT-6 unit — the core of the refining process. This installation, one of Russia's ten largest refining complexes, supplying roughly 40% of the Moscow region's fuel needs, is now offline for at least six months according to oil industry source estimates cited by Reuters.

Striking Moscow twice in 48 hours sends a message that Russian air defenses struggle to deny. The capital, supposedly the country's best-protected city, can no longer guarantee the inviolability of its strategic industrial installations. Kapotnya residents saw the smoke. They filmed the fires. And those images circulated online, despite Russian authorities' attempts to control information.

The strike systems: FP-1, Lyutyi, and Ukrainian Shahed-type drones

The drones used in the Kapotnya strikes were identified by OSINT analysts from available imagery: FP-1, Lyutyi, and Shahed-type systems — a Ukrainian adaptation of the Iranian drone that Russia uses against Ukraine, reverse-engineered and improved by Ukrainian engineers. This irony did not escape observers: the drones that Iran delivers to Russia to strike Ukraine have become models that Ukraine uses to strike Russia.

The diversification of platforms is deliberate. By using different systems with distinct flight profiles, Ukraine complicates the task of Russian detection and interception systems, which must simultaneously manage threats at different altitudes, speeds, and radar signatures. This is complexity saturation — not just numerical saturation — an approach that has proven effective.

Days 11 to 20: the operation extends toward the Urals

Ufa, Bashkiria: 1,300 kilometers beyond the lines

If the strikes on Moscow made the first headlines, it was the strike on Ufa on June 25, 2026 that redefined the strategic parameters of the operation. More than 1,300 kilometers of distance, two of the three Bashneft refineries in the city's northern industrial complex hit: Bashneft-Ufaneftekhim and probably Bashneft-Novoil. The complex belongs to Rosneft, the state oil giant controlled by Putin's regime.

This strike represents a qualitative break in the 40-day operation. It is not within the traditional operating zones of Ukrainian drones. It reaches a region that Russia considered a secure rear area, protected by its very distance. In striking Ufa, Ukraine tells every Russian industrial region — in the Urals, along the Volga, across Western Siberia — that distance is no longer sufficient protection. This is a strategic paradigm shift.

Governor Khabirov denies it, the smoke confirms it

The official reaction to the Ufa strike followed the standard script of the Russian regime when faced with successful Ukrainian blows. Bashkiria's governor, Radiy Khabirov, immediately claimed that defenses had repelled the attack and that only debris had caused limited damage. The plants would be operating normally. But satellite imagery, OSINT analysis from Telegram channel Astra, and above all the black smoke visible for kilometers contradicted this official version with eloquent brutality.

Moscow also imposed mobile internet restrictions in Bashkiria during the drone alert — a signal that something serious had happened. For if the defenses had truly worked as announced, the authorities would not have cut mobile internet. This reflexive censorship has become, paradoxically, the best indicator that Ukrainian strikes are hitting their marks: when the internet goes dark, the strike succeeded.

Crimea in the operation: the southern front of Ukrainian pressure

Sevastopol, the Kerch Bridge, and logistics installations

The 40-day operation is not limited to deep strikes on continental Russian territory. It also includes continuous raids on Crimea's installations — the occupied peninsula that Putin's regime made a symbol of its empire and an advanced logistics base. The port of Sevastopol, naval installations, fuel and ammunition depots, air defense systems based on the peninsula — all are in the crosshairs of the 40-day operation.

Crimea is doubly valuable for Ukraine in this strategy. It is both a political symbol — its reconquest remains Kyiv's declared objective — and an essential military logistics hub for Russian operations in the Black Sea and southern Ukraine. Every installation destroyed in Crimea reduces Russia's capacity to project power in the region and maintain its supply lines to the front.

The Black Sea as a theater of economic warfare

The war in the Black Sea is one of the least covered but most significant fronts of this conflict. Ukraine has managed to neutralize a significant portion of Russia's Black Sea fleet — notably by sinking or damaging several major vessels — using surface naval drones. This naval pressure is an integral part of the 40-day operation: it aims to deny Russia the capacity to project naval power in the Black Sea and protect its supply routes to Crimea.

The result of this naval campaign is that Russia has had to relocate part of its Black Sea fleet to the Caspian Sea, out of range of Ukrainian drones but also out of any operational usefulness in the conflict. This is a considerable tactical success for a Ukrainian navy that technically no longer has large surface vessels since 2022.

The numbers behind the flames: quantifying economic pressure

Russian refining production down one-third

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte provided a striking figure in his conversation with the Atlantic Council on June 25, 2026: Russian refining production has fallen by one-third since the start of Ukraine's campaign of strikes on oil installations. This is a figure of considerable gravity for an economy whose energy exports are the primary engine. Reducing refining capacity by one-third means reducing by the same proportion the revenue from exported petroleum products and domestic fuel supply.

In this already tight economic context — budget deficit exceeding $80 billion, defense spending at more than 40% of the federal budget, sovereign wealth fund being depleted — this reduction in refining output adds to a considerable cumulative pressure. Russia is not on the immediate edge of economic collapse, but it is on a trajectory of progressive degradation that accelerates with every refinery taken offline.

Russian bonds falling: markets signal alarm

Russia's financial markets are sending their own warning signals. Russian government bonds have fallen amid war-spending plans, with yields reaching approximately 15% — a level indicating investor distrust in Russia's long-term debt-servicing capacity. High bond yields signal that bond buyers are demanding a rising risk premium to hold Russian debt.

Meanwhile, Russia plans to increase its military spending by an additional 4 to 5 trillion rubles in 2026, according to data published by Bloomberg on June 23. This spending increase in a context of revenues degraded by strikes and sanctions creates a structural fiscal pressure. Zelensky's sanctions adviser, cited by RBC-Ukraine on June 26, 2026, summed it up in a sentence: "Russia's economy has reached a dead end."

The 40 days in time: the logic of the long campaign

Why 40 days? Duration as a strategic signal

The choice of the number 40 to name this operation may not be accidental in a country whose religious and cultural history is deeply marked by this number — the 40 days of Lent, the 40 years in the desert. For part of the Ukrainian and international audience, the allusion is subtle but present. But beyond the symbolism, the 40-day duration is also an operational parameter: long enough to produce real cumulative economic effects, short enough to maintain an intense tempo without exhausting drone production capacity.

A 40-day campaign of intensified strikes on Russian energy and logistics infrastructure imposes on Russia a continuous expenditure of interceptor missiles and air defense resources. Every drone intercepted costs money and an interception missile. Every drone not intercepted costs a damaged installation. In either case, Ukraine imposes a cost on Russia.

After 40 days: a pause or an escalation?

The question every analyst is asking is: what happens at the end of the 40 days? Zelensky announced this duration publicly, creating an expectation. At the end of the period, will Ukraine pause to assess results? Extend the operation? Transform it into a new, more intense phase? The answers depend on results achieved, available drone stockpiles, and military priorities on the ground front.

What is certain is that Ukraine's deep-strike capabilities will not disappear when the 40 days are up. The industrial infrastructure and operational doctrines built for this campaign will remain in place. Ukraine can decide at any point to resume deep strikes. This permanent threat is itself a strategic asset — it forces Russia to maintain a costly defense posture across its entire territory, even between active campaigns.

The human front: soldiers, engineers, civilians

The engineers in the shadows: those who build the weapons that burn the refineries

Behind every drone strike are hundreds of engineers, technicians, and skilled workers who design, test, program, and deploy these systems. In Ukraine, this industry has developed under extraordinary conditions: workshops relocated to avoid Russian strikes, decentralized production lines, financing from private and public funds. It is an industrial revolution of war, conducted at the speed urgency demands.

These people do not make the front page. Their names are unknown — for obvious security reasons. But their creations — the FP-1, the Lyutyi, the anonymous long-range drones that burn the Ufa refineries — are the most effective tools Ukraine has in its economic war against Russia. They deserve a recognition that operational secrecy prevents them from receiving publicly.

Ukrainian civilians paying the price of resistance

The 40-day operation unfolds in a context where Ukrainian civilians continue paying a terrible price. While Ukrainian drones strike Russian refineries, Russian missiles keep falling on Ukrainian cities. The Kh-22, Kh-101, and Iranian Shahed drones — Russia strikes relentlessly at Ukrainian electrical infrastructure, residential buildings, hospitals. The war has no humanitarian pause for Ukrainians, even as their drones strike far away.

This reality is important to keep in view, so as not to fall into an overly abstract narrative of economic warfare. Behind the refining production figures and Russian bond statistics, people are dying in Ukraine every day. The 40-day operation is a brilliant military strategy, but it unfolds in the midst of a continuing human tragedy whose primary responsibility rests with Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky the strategist: communication as a weapon

The public declaration as a signal to multiple audiences

By publicly announcing the 40-day operation, Zelensky plays on multiple registers simultaneously. For Western allies: Ukraine is not passive, it has a strategy, it is taking initiatives. This message is crucial ahead of the NATO Ankara summit on July 7-8, 2026, where discussions on support for Ukraine will be central. For Ukrainians: their country is striking back, their sacrifice serves a purpose, the government has a plan. For Putin: forty days of pressure are coming, prepare yourselves.

This capacity to transform a military operation into a political communication tool is one of Zelensky's most undervalued strengths. He understands better than most contemporary leaders that in a modern war, the narrative is as powerful a weapon as missiles. Controlling the narrative, giving resistance a story — a plan, a timeline, an ambition — reinforces allied resolve and weakens enemy will.

Ukraine at the Ankara summit: what the strikes tell the allies

The NATO Ankara summit, July 7-8, 2026, takes place in a context marked by the successes of Ukraine's deep-strike campaign. Zelensky will be present, and the strikes on Kapotnya and Ufa constitute a concrete argument for increased support. They show that Ukraine is using its capabilities effectively, that it is taking strategic initiatives, and that additional support will produce tangible results.

Secretary General Rutte announced that the Ankara summit should see the announcement of "tens of billions" in new defense contracts, and that Zelensky will participate directly. Ukraine has every reason to want the 40-day operation to produce visible results before this summit — and the strikes on Moscow, Ufa, and Crimea are precisely the concrete evidence it will present to allies.

Russia's response: from propaganda to emergency measures

Moscow between denial and logistical adaptation

Russia's official response to the strikes of the 40-day operation runs on two parallel tracks. In public communication: systematic denial or minimization of damage, claims that defenses "repelled" attacks, silence on real economic consequences. In internal crisis management: emergency measures to compensate for production losses, plans to import fuel by sea, relative reinforcement of defenses around key installations.

This dual response reveals the fundamental tension in Putin's regime: it must maintain an appearance of control and invulnerability for domestic consumption, while managing behind closed doors the real consequences of strikes that have significantly disrupted its industrial infrastructure. Propaganda and reality are pulling in opposite directions, and managing this growing gap is a governance challenge the Kremlin did not anticipate.

Russia's air defense adaptation: expensive and insufficient

Facing the Ukrainian campaign, Russia has attempted to improve its defenses against long-range drones. It has deployed more low-altitude air defense systems, developed electronic countermeasures, created reinforced exclusion zones around strategic installations. But effectively protecting thousands of industrial facilities spread across a territory of more than 17 million km² is a task that even the Russian military cannot accomplish with its available air defense resources.

The cost of this extended defense is considerable. Every Pantsir or Tor system deployed to protect a Urals refinery is one fewer system available for the Ukrainian front. Every interception missile fired at a drone costs more than the drone itself. And every time Russia reinforces defense in one area, Ukraine can simply strike elsewhere. This is the relentless logic of the offensive drone against the defensive missile, and it structurally favors the attacker.

The 40 days in the context of international diplomacy

The operation and negotiations: Putin resists any agreement

The 40-day operation unfolds in a particular diplomatic context. Putin, questioned in late June 2026, again repeated his openness to negotiating based on the "2022 Istanbul agreements" — a position that the ISW (Institute for the Study of War) described in its June 23, 2026 assessment as a "reaffirmation of 2022 war aims," meaning total Ukrainian capitulation. This is not a peace offer — it is a demand for surrender.

Faced with this maximalist Russian position, the 40-day campaign sends an important signal: Ukraine has no intention of negotiating from a position of weakness. By striking Russian refineries, demonstrating its long-range capabilities, imposing rising economic costs, Kyiv tells Moscow and potential mediators that any agreement must be negotiated on a balanced basis — not on the rubble of an exhausted Ukraine forced to accept unacceptable conditions.

Prisoner exchanges: a humanity running parallel to the war

Even during the 40-day operation, Ukraine maintained its prisoner of war exchange mechanisms. On June 26, 2026, the 76th prisoner exchange brought home 160 Ukrainian soldiers from Russian captivity — the third exchange under a complex agreement mediated by the United Arab Emirates. Since the start of 2026, 1,596 Ukrainians have returned, and more than 9,500 since the start of the war according to Zelensky and data published by the Kyiv Independent on June 26.

These exchanges take place alongside strikes, combat, and economic pressure. They are a reminder that behind the strategies and statistics, there are men and women returning to their families after months or years of captivity. This is an irreducible human dimension of this war, one that the 40-day operation does not erase and should not eclipse.

The 40-day doctrine as seen by Western think tanks

Military analysts dissect Ukraine's strategy

Zelensky's 40-day operation was quickly analyzed by Western military think tanks. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which tracks Ukrainian operations daily, noted in its late-June 2026 assessments that Ukrainian deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure constitute a coherent and deliberate economic attrition strategy. The strikes do not aim to destroy Russian military capacity in a single blow — they aim to degrade it progressively, cumulatively, over time.

This analysis aligns with that of the Brookings Institution, which had noted before the Ankara summit that NATO rebalancing is built in part on Ukrainian lessons. Ukraine's capacity to wage asymmetric economic warfare with drones changes strategic calculations not only for this conflict, but for the defense doctrines of the entire Atlantic Alliance.

The impact on NATO doctrine: Ankara July 7-8 as crystallization

The NATO summit in Ankara, July 7-8, 2026, is the opportunity to formally integrate Ukrainian lessons into Alliance doctrines and planning. Rutte insisted before the Atlantic Council on June 25 on the need for a "transatlantic defense industrial revolution," explicitly citing Ukraine's lessons. Anti-drone doctrines, counter-drone systems, long-range munitions production — all directly influenced by what Ukraine has done for four years.

Beyond military doctrines, the Ankara summit must also deliver on financial commitments. The "tens of billions" in new defense contracts announced by Rutte, the 5% of GDP in defense spending by 2035, the eastern flank reinforcements — all of this will be on the table under pressure from Zelensky's forty days of fire. Ukraine is striking Russian refineries, and NATO is meeting in Ankara. These two events are not independent.

Projection: the next 40 days and beyond

Possible scenarios after the operation period

Several scenarios can take shape at the end of the 40 days. The first: the operation achieves its industrial degradation objectives, and Ukraine decides on a pause to assess results and rebuild drone stockpiles. This scenario maintains economic pressure via sanctions while preserving Ukrainian capabilities for future operations. The second: the operation is extended, intensifying strikes on new targets, exploiting the element of surprise that the Ufa strike established across Urals regions.

The third scenario, least likely but not zero: a ceasefire offer emerges under international pressure, and Ukraine must balance continuing its strikes against maintaining a diplomatic dialogue. In that case, the 40-day campaign serves as a bargaining chip — Ukraine can agree to suspend strikes in exchange for concrete guarantees. But given Putin's current positions, this scenario seems remote from battlefield reality.

The central question: can Ukraine sustain this pace?

The long-term viability of the deep-strike strategy depends on Ukraine's ability to maintain drone production at a sufficient pace. Building thousands of drones a month, programming them, deploying them, replacing them — all of this requires an industrial and logistics chain that remains vulnerable to Russian strikes. If Russia succeeds in systematically identifying and striking Ukrainian drone production facilities, the 40-day strategy could be disrupted.

But Ukraine has made decentralization a founding principle of its drone industry. Production workshops are dispersed, often in unlisted locations, regularly relocating. This industrial resilience is one reason why Russian strikes on the Ukrainian economy, despite their intensity, have not managed to halt drone production. Ukraine produces, Ukraine strikes, and Ukraine will continue.

Ukraine's allies facing proof by facts: what the 40 days demonstrate

Ukraine proves that well-used support produces concrete results

Zelensky's 40-day operation comes at a crucial moment in Western support for Ukraine. Some allies are questioning the effectiveness of aid provided, Ukraine's capacity to maintain its resistance, the prospects for a negotiated settlement. The strikes on Kapotnya and Ufa answer these questions with a clarity that no speech could match: Ukraine is using its resources to strike Russia's vital infrastructure with growing precision, and the results are measurable.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, before the Atlantic Council on June 25, 2026, did not hesitate to underscore that Russian refining production had fallen by one-third. This figure, stated at the highest diplomatic level, illustrates the integration of Ukrainian results into the Alliance's narrative. Ukraine is not merely asking for support — it is demonstrating, through facts, that it deserves its partners' confidence.

The Ankara summit as the diplomatic harvest of the 40 days

The NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8, 2026 will be the first major diplomatic meeting where allies debate under the shadow of Ukraine's deep strikes. Zelensky will attend in a strengthened position: as a war leader who can show concrete results, enemy installations offline, a coherent strategy in execution. This counts for something in a diplomatic negotiation where military credibility matters as much as legal or moral arguments.

Ukraine's objectives at Ankara — accelerated arms deliveries, confirmation of the 5% of GDP defense spending commitment, support for a strengthened oil embargo — are carried by this momentum. Ukraine is not showing up as a supplicant. It is showing up as a partner that is pulling its weight, innovating, taking real risks, and demanding from its allies a consistency commensurate with its own sacrifices.

The limits and risks of the deep-strike strategy

What Ukraine can and cannot accomplish with its drones

The 40-day campaign is impressive, but it would be irresponsible not to note its limits. Ukrainian drones can degrade Russian refineries, but they cannot permanently destroy them. Russia has repair capabilities — slowed by sanctions — and enough territory to disperse and protect its most critical installations. Every refinery hit will be rebuilt, more slowly than usual, but rebuilt. Ukraine knows this and integrates it into its strategy: the goal is not total destruction, but persistent degradation.

There is also a real escalation risk, even if Moscow's repeated warnings have lost credibility. Every new strike threshold — from Belgorod to Moscow, from Moscow to Ufa — tests the limits of Russian tolerance. So far, Russia has chosen rhetoric over symmetric escalation. But this restraint has limits that neither Kyiv nor its allies can map with certainty.

The sustainability question: can Ukraine maintain this pace?

Producing and deploying thousands of drones per month while absorbing Russian strikes on its own production infrastructure is a considerable industrial challenge. Ukraine has opted for maximum decentralization of its production chain — hundreds of dispersed workshops rather than one vulnerable large factory. This strategy is effective against Russian strikes, but also limits economies of scale and system standardization.

The sustainability of the 40-day operation — and the deep-strike strategy beyond it — therefore depends as much on Ukrainian industrial capacity as on the availability of raw materials, electronic components, and motors. This is where Western support takes on critical importance: no longer just in heavy weapons, but in components, technologies, industrial know-how. Ukraine can strike at 1,300 km. It needs its allies to keep doing so.

Conclusion: forty days of fire, an irreversible strategic transformation

What this operation changes in the balance of power

Zelensky's 40-day operation will not alone decide the outcome of the war. No one claims otherwise. But it changes something important in the balance of power between Ukraine and Russia: it demonstrates that Ukraine can impose real, measurable, and persistent economic costs on its adversary, even while militarily weaker. It proves that Russian geographic depth is no longer an absolute protection. And it sends a signal to all actors in the conflict — allies, neutrals, adversaries — that Ukraine has not said its last word.

The refineries of Kapotnya and Ufa will not reopen for months, perhaps longer. Russian refining output will remain constrained. Russia will import gasoline by sea. And Ukrainian engineers will keep building the drones that make all of this possible. This is the reality of this war in June 2026 — a reality that forty days of fire have made even more visible.

Ukraine as a model of creative resistance

This report is also, in its deep current, the story of a country that refuses to be defined by its losses and chooses instead to be defined by its innovations. Fourth year of war, economy under pressure, terrible human losses — and yet, drones reaching the Urals, a defense industry scaling up, a president announcing offensive operations and carrying them out. Ukraine is a model of creative resistance that history will remember, whatever the final outcome of this conflict.

Zelensky's forty days of fire are not the end of something. They are the beginning of a new phase — one in which Ukraine no longer settles for holding the line, but actively imposes its terms on a Russia compelled to defend its entire gigantic territory. This is a partial strategic reversal, insufficient to win the war alone, but enough to change its dynamic. And in a conflict measured in years, changing the dynamic is already a form of victory.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My positions and biases

I am Maxime Marquette, a columnist specializing in armed conflicts and geopolitics. I am pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin — two declared positions that shape but do not determine my analysis. I distinguish between verified facts, which I report with rigor, and opinions, which I clearly signal with editorial markers.

This report is based on open sources published between June 21 and 27, 2026. All factual information has been cross-referenced with at least two independent sources wherever possible. When this was not possible, I say so. I do not report testimony from unpublished anonymous sources, and I do not fabricate facts.

What I do not know

I do not have access to the operational details of the 40-day operation — its precise objectives, its real interim results, its operational limitations. The damage figures for Russian refineries are based on industry source estimates and OSINT analysis, not direct inspections. The actual downtime for struck installations may differ from published estimates. These uncertainties are an integral part of honest analysis of an ongoing conflict.

I also seek not to underestimate Russian economic resilience. The figures are hard, but Russia has shown surprising adaptive capacity since 2022. The economic degradation I describe is real, but an immediate collapse would not be consistent with available data. I maintain this nuance even when it tempers the optimism I would like to have.

Sources

Primary sources

Euromaidan Press — Drones flew 1,300 km to Russia's Ufa, struck Bashneft refineries — June 25, 2026

Militarnyi / Reuters — Moscow refinery unlikely to resume before 2027, gasoline imports by sea — June 24, 2026

Kyiv Independent — 160 Ukrainian POWs released in 76th exchange — June 26, 2026

Secondary sources

NATO / Atlantic Council — Rutte: Russian refining production down one-third, Ankara summit — June 25, 2026

RBC-Ukraine — Zelensky adviser: Russia's economy has reached a dead end — June 26, 2026

Ground News / Bloomberg — Russia to increase war spending by additional 4-5 trillion rubles — June 23, 2026

ISW — Russian offensive campaign assessment, Putin/Lavrov negotiating positions — June 23, 2026