Ukraine is taking out high-value Russian military targets with behind-the-lines drone attacks, shifting the direction of their 4-year-old war and forcing Russia to develop new satellite-jamming techniques.
The drones can strike 30 to 100 kilometers behind front lines, expanding the Ukrainian kill zone and requiring Russia to divert resources to protect its supply lines and infrastructure, according to a June 2026 article in Foreign Affairs magazine by two former Pentagon officials. “This reverses a trend of Russian gains throughout 2025 that had many analysts worried about Ukraine’s capacity to continue fighting,” the article said.
In response, Russian forces are protecting targets such as fuel and other military supplies by hiding shipments in civilian trucks and cars and by using electronic jamming devices to block connections used to pilot the drones, Ukrainian leaders told the international news agency Reuters.
In a concerted campaign this year, Reuters reported, Ukraine has attacked supply lines, fuel storage facilities, air-defense installations and command centers, disrupting Russian forces’ logistics and causing fuel shortages in Russian-occupied Crimea.
The Ukrainian military has relied on Starlink, with some 11,000 satellites operating in low Earth orbit, since the early days of the February 2022 invasion by Russia. The network had been largely considered immune to interference.
Now, jamming devices have been installed near towns and military centers, including at least 10 units that can emit a signal strong enough to destabilize the Starlink connection, Reuters reported. The devices are known as Volna Kupol Garant, or wave dome guarantor in English.
Ukrainian forces detected the location of some of the devices and have targeted at least two in drone attacks. Still, military analysts told Reuters that Russia might see more success in its defense against the drones if it can deploy more of the jamming devices.
Scaling up Volna Kupol Garant may prove challenging, analysts told the Ukrainian news website TCH. The electronic warfare system was designed to target Starlink, but it requires massive power and only can track one satellite at a time in the ubiquitous constellation. At an estimated $1.5 million each, the jammer investment may not justify the outcome.
SpaceX, meantime, has cut the access that Russian troops also once had to Starlink.
In a nighttime field visit with Ukrainian troops, Reuters saw them pack a warhead containing a high explosive into a winged drone before it was launched by catapult toward Russian-occupied Crimea. The target: a base used by Russian drone pilots.
One Ukrainian commander described for Reuters the tactics Moscow uses to protect its supplies against the attacks. “We hit water tankers and the tankers were burning because there was gasoline inside. We’ve hit painted-up milk trucks that had diesel fuel in them.”
Russia also is reportedly using camouflaged dugouts, abandoned buildings and farm buildings to conceal supplies, and civilian gas stations to store fuel.
Since the start of the war, Russia has employed satellite interference as a weapon across Europe. The United Nations along with its aviation and digital regulatory agencies have condemned Russia for disrupting global navigation satellite systems such as GPS.
In addition, U.S. academic research has recently revealed that a constellation of Russian missile-warning satellites is the source of intermittent interference recorded for years in GPS signals from Italy to Iceland.
Ukrainian forces circumvented Russian jamming for now in their campaign to fend off a takeover, the Foreign Policy article noted. “Ukraine’s continued operational innovation, increasing use of autonomy, and capacity to scale production of many different kinds of drone capabilities have opened a narrow but real window of opportunity.”