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

> 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

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Reportage
- Published: 2026-06-28
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/reportage-quarante-jours-de-feu-l-operation-de-pression-de-zelensky-qui-vise-les

## 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.

*What strikes me about the announcement of the 40-day operation is Zelensky's communicational courage. Publicly announcing an ongoing military operation means risking alerting the adversary and creating expectations that military setbacks might disappoint. But it is also an act of transparency toward allies and the Ukrainian people — a signal that the president is not hiding his intentions behind diplomatic euphemisms. In a world of opaque political communication, that is refreshing.*

## 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.

*The FP-1 and Lyutyi drones are symbols of Ukraine's industrial renaissance at war. These names, unknown to the general public, represent years of work by Ukrainian engineers developing their systems under bombardment, often in precarious conditions, with limited resources. When these drones reach Moscow, it is their triumph as much as that of the Ukrainian military. I wanted to name them.*

## 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.

*Russia's censorship mechanism has become its own enemy. Every mobile internet blackout in a region that has been struck is an inadvertent signal to the world: "The strike succeeded, and we are trying to control the information." Ukraine, its allies, and international observers have learned to read this censorship as confirmation. Moscow has turned its control tool into a verification tool for its own defeats. It is absurd, and it is revealing.*

## 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.

*Ukraine's naval campaign in the Black Sea is one of the most remarkable stories of this war, and it deserves an article of its own. Surface naval drones — artisanally built at first — managed to neutralize part of the Black Sea fleet, a fleet that was supposed to be one of the most powerful in the region. This is the triumph of ingenuity over brute force, and it is deeply inspiring.*

## 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."

*Bond yields at 15% on Russian sovereign debt: this is a figure that financial analysts read very differently from military analysts. For an economist, it is a signal of sovereign distress — markets are starting to price in doubt. For a strategist, it is confirmation that the combined economic pressure of sanctions and Ukrainian strikes is working. I am neither economist nor strategist, but I read both, and both say the same thing: Russia is in difficulty.*

## 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 permanent threat may be the most underestimated aspect of Ukraine's strategy. Even when Ukraine is not actively striking 1,300 km deep, Russia knows it can. It must therefore maintain defenses, patrols, alert systems — all of which have a permanent cost. This is what is called the "cost of defense imposed by the adversary" — and it is a form of victory even when no drone is in flight.*

## 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**.

*I never want to lose sight of the human reality behind strategic analyses. It is easy to become fascinated by the sophistication of drone strikes, Russian economic figures, and geopolitical calculations — and to forget that meanwhile, Ukrainians are dying under Russian bombs. The 40-day operation is necessary, but it does not erase daily suffering. And that suffering must stay at the center of our attention.*

## 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.

*The synchronization between Ukrainian military operations and major diplomatic appointments is something I have observed since the start of the war. Zelensky may be the best political communicator of his generation — not because he lies well, but because he aligns words and actions with rare consistency. When he says Ukraine will strike, refineries burn. That consistency is itself a form of diplomatic credibility.*

## 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 cost-effectiveness ratio of the offensive drone against the defensive missile is one of the paradoxes of this war. A Ukrainian long-range drone costs tens of thousands of dollars. A Patriot interceptor missile costs between $2 and $4 million. If Russia fires a Patriot to intercept a low-cost drone, it loses economically. If it does not fire, its installation burns. Ukraine has found the fundamental asymmetry that lets it pressure an economy ten times its size.*

## 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.

*Prisoner exchanges move me deeply. Every return represents a life pulled from Russian captivity — with all the trauma, lasting damage, and difficult reunions that entails. And the fact that these exchanges continue while drones strike Moscow shows something important: Ukraine does not confuse military war and human policy. It fights and negotiates the return of its children simultaneously. This is not a contradiction — it is maturity.*

## 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.

*The link between Ukrainian strikes and Ankara's decisions is a perfect illustration of what I call "the diplomacy of the strategic fait accompli." By striking Ufa at 1,300 km, Zelensky arrives at Ankara not as a president begging for help — but as a war leader bringing concrete proof of effectiveness. That changes everything in the negotiating dynamic with allies who sometimes question the relevance of their support.*

## 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.

*Ukrainian industrial decentralization may be the real answer to the question "how can Ukraine hold on?" No single large armaments factory to take down, but hundreds of scattered workshops, thousands of networked engineers, an agile war industry impossible to neutralize in a single blow. This is the strength of the weak facing the strong: when you are smaller, you fragment to survive.*

## 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.

*I look at the Ankara summit with cautious optimism. Zelensky has consistently succeeded in transforming military challenges into diplomatic arguments throughout the war. The 40 days of fire are his trump card at Ankara. The question is whether his allies, too often trapped by their own internal contradictions, will rise to the moment. I hope so. But I have learned not to presume the coherence of democracies under pressure.*

## 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.

*I end this report with an acute awareness of the limits of what I can analyze from the outside. I am not in Ukrainian drone production workshops. I do not know how long this pace can be sustained. What I know is that Ukraine has demonstrated a capacity for adaptation and innovation that few people would have predicted in February 2022. That justifies cautious respect and unequivocal support.*

## 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

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

*Forty days of sustained pressure on Russia's energy infrastructure. That's not a news cycle — that's a strategic campaign. I've spent enough time covering conflicts to know that this kind of operational coherence doesn't emerge from desperation. It emerges from a doctrine, a leadership, and a military that has been forged by three years of existential warfare into something that NATO itself should study, not merely support. The question Ankara can't avoid: when does "partner" become "member"? When does support become solidarity? The answer has been deferred too many times.*

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — Drones flew 1,300 km to Russia's Ufa, struck Bashneft refineries — June 25, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/25/drones-flew-1300-km-to-russias-ufa-then-struck-bashneft-refineries/)

- [Militarnyi / Reuters — Moscow refinery unlikely to resume before 2027, gasoline imports by sea — June 24, 2026](https://militarnyi.com/en/news/moscow-refinery-unlikely-to-resume-operations-after-drone-strikes-until-2027-reuters/)

- [Kyiv Independent — 160 Ukrainian POWs released in 76th exchange — June 26, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/160-ukrainian-pows-released-from-russian-captivity-in-latest-exchange-zelensky-says/)

### Secondary sources

- [NATO / Atlantic Council — Rutte: Russian refining production down one-third, Ankara summit — June 25, 2026](https://www.nato.int/en/news-and-events/events/transcripts/2026/06/25/atlantic-council-front-page-conversation-with-nato-secretary-general-mark-rutte)

- [RBC-Ukraine — Zelensky adviser: Russia's economy has reached a dead end — June 26, 2026](https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-s-economy-has-reached-dead-end-zelenskyy-1782474737.html)

- [Ground News / Bloomberg — Russia to increase war spending by additional 4-5 trillion rubles — June 23, 2026](https://ground.news/article/bloomberg-russia-to-increase-war-spending-by-an-additional-45-trillion-rubles-in-2026)

- [ISW — Russian offensive campaign assessment, Putin/Lavrov negotiating positions — June 23, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-23-2026/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/reportage-quarante-jours-de-feu-l-operation-de-pression-de-zelensky-qui-vise-les