Russia’s Military Collapse & NATO’s Fear: Glen Grant on Ukraine’s Deep Strikes

01.06.2026, 02:21 uatv.ua

Ukraine is hitting the foundation of Russia’s war machine harder and harder. In this new episode with British military expert Glen Grant, we analyze how the “Logistical Blockade” campaign is becoming one of the most dangerous threats to the Kremlin. As Ukrainian strikes disable oil refining capacity, fuel depots, and S-400 air defense systems, Russia is losing the ability to maintain the pace of war.

Why has the much-publicized “Oreshnik” become a symbol of Russia’s military technology failures? How serious are the consequences of strikes on Russia’s economy? And most importantly — why does the West still fear escalation, even as Ukraine demonstrates the ability to change the course of the war in its favor? We examine the Kremlin’s key miscalculations and the new battlefield reality where the initiative is increasingly shifting to Ukraine.

— Russia seems to be just watching the show, unable to shoot down Ukrainian drones. Is that really the case? Can’t they adapt fast enough? What’s going on?

— There are a lot of things going on. One factor is that Russia’s strength is also its weakness. Russia is huge. That means it simply cannot deploy enough air defense systems to cover the entire country.

The second issue is the quality of some of the personnel operating those systems. Air defense requires constant readiness and rapid reactions when missiles, rockets, or drones are incoming.

When you combine those two factors — the enormous territory and the human factor — you get serious vulnerabilities. And I mean the human factor quite seriously. We know that many soldiers fighting on the front line are not always in ideal condition, and that affects performance.

Russia clearly has a real problem with this. The results are visible to everyone. Their air defense systems are not as effective as many people expected them to be.

— The strike on the Torzhok oil pumping station in the Vladimir region showed that no safe zones really exist in Russia anymore. Around 40% of oil refining capacity is reportedly shut down.

What does that mean for Russia’s summer campaign?

— There are several knock-on effects. The first is the direct financial impact. If that 40% of production is offline, the government loses a significant amount of tax revenue.

The second issue is that many of the companies involved were already financially overstretched. Many of them took loans to operate and now their facilities have been damaged or destroyed. They still have to repay those loans.

That creates a downstream effect on the banking sector because banks invested heavily in those enterprises. If that money doesn’t come back, the banks themselves become vulnerable.

So the vulnerability isn’t only about reduced oil production affecting military logistics. The entire financial system becomes shakier.

And there is no large reserve of money available to stabilize that financial system because the government needs virtually all available resources to sustain the war effort — paying soldiers, funding recruitment, and maintaining military operations.

— Speaking of recruitment, I believe Putin must fear a major mobilization wave, but we’ll come back to that later.

For now, let’s talk about the destruction of enemy logistics and air defense.

While strategic targets are burning deep in the Russian rear and in occupied territories, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue systematically destroying some of Russia’s most expensive military assets. Ukraine is effectively creating a kill zone roughly 150 kilometers deep behind the front line, which is helping contain occupation forces.

For example, the destruction of several Su-24 and Su-30SM aircraft at a Russian air base in Crimea and the destruction of an S-400 system in the Kherson region suggest to me that there is a systemic crisis in Russian air defense.

Where are these supposedly invincible Russian air-defense umbrellas? Why do they seem so vulnerable?

— I think it goes back to what I said earlier. The overall system simply isn’t working as effectively as many people assumed.

And who ever proved that Russia had a super air-defense system in the first place? There was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding systems like the S-400 and other Russian weapons.

But in practice, they have not performed at the level many expected.

— Recently a British Storm Shadow missile reportedly struck a heavily protected command post in the Luhansk region, eliminating another occupation headquarters.

How would modern military science evaluate the loss of a headquarters at that level during active offensive and defensive operations? Does it really matter for a large army like Russia’s?

— It absolutely matters. The army may be large, but you still need people coordinating movement, organizing supplies, delivering water, food, ammunition, and managing operations.

When you strike headquarters, you inevitably create delays and disruption.

But the key point is coordination. When you destroy a headquarters, you create an opportunity for a counterattack. If you don’t exploit that opportunity, the enemy eventually reorganizes and establishes a new headquarters.

That’s why military operations need to be synchronized. Front-line operations, mid-range strikes, and long-range attacks should all be coordinated in a cohesive manner.

The goal is to leave the enemy unable to function because multiple parts of the system fail simultaneously. We haven’t perfected that yet, but I believe we are getting closer. And if we get it right, the result won’t be isolated disruptions here and there. There will be a real fracture throughout the system.

At that point, the enemy begins to fall apart, and that fracture has to be exploited. That is how a military collapse develops.

— Otherwise, at the moment we’re still playing the frontal attack game rather than a maneuver game.

It’s encouraging to hear from a British colonel that we’re at least getting closer to some level of cohesion because the Ukrainian army five years ago was still heavily influenced by Soviet doctrine and certainly far from the British Army model.

Now we’re much closer to making the enemy gasp for air. And I think we should continue at that pace — perhaps even faster. Let me push you toward discussing the Russian command more generally.

Russia is trying to hide equipment and fuel depots using engineering structures and passive protection measures. Clearly, it’s not working. There are countless videos online showing everything burning. So how is Ukraine doing this? What is the magic wand that allows Ukrainian forces to detect and destroy hidden targets so accurately?

— There’s nothing magical about it. It’s simply good work. You fly a drone, identify what’s there, then send another drone to destroy it. And we’re getting progressively better at doing that all the time.

The next stage is actually more complex. It involves using negative data, not just positive data. By negative data, I mean information that tells you where the enemy is not. You identify empty areas, find the gaps, and move into them.

There is actually far more negative data than positive data because even though Russia has a large army, it leaves gaps everywhere. For a long time we’ve been sitting back, waiting for them to attack again. Understandably so. But we need to seize the initiative.

What the Ministry of Defense is doing now with different drone systems is giving commanders a greater ability to strike deep into enemy territory. Not just with FPV drones or small commercial drones, but with systems that provide real range and reach.

There’s no point in having a drone that can identify a target 120 kilometers away if you don’t have a strike drone capable of reaching it. So surveillance and strike capabilities have to be matched. Those capabilities then need to be given to corps commanders and distributed down to brigades so they can conduct long-range attacks.

But long-range attacks must then be followed by movement on the ground. You cannot simply sit back and destroy targets at a distance forever. The enemy will adapt. If one road is blocked, they’ll find another.

That’s why we need real coherence in operations.

As I said, I can see that developing, but it’s not magic. It’s doctrine, coordination, planning, and more planning. The key is ensuring you have resources before launching an operation, not after it has already begun. Military logistics usually work on what we call a “day-for-day” basis. You receive enough supplies for one day and conduct one day’s worth of fighting.

If you want to launch a major offensive, you need to spend days building reserves.

Maybe for five, six, seven, eight, ten, even fifteen days you deliberately consume less than you receive so that reserves accumulate. Every couple of days you create another day’s worth of spare ammunition and supplies. Before even considering a major attack, you need several days of reserves. If you can accumulate fifteen or twenty days, then you know you can attack, continue attacking, and maintain momentum.

If you remember the offensives of 2023, we started strongly, made progress, and then ran out of steam. We cannot afford that anymore. If we go, we have to keep going.

— Let’s talk about tactical breakthroughs, air-defense effectiveness, and what some call the Kremlin’s technological bluff. Along the front line, the high-tech approach of the Ukrainian defense forces allows them to stop mechanized assaults before Russian forces have fully deployed into attack formations.

At the same time, the Kremlin responds with large-scale missile terror, which we’ve all seen, and what appears to be a demonstration of technological incompetence by the Russian military-industrial complex. Let’s find out whether that’s really the case.

According to some analysts and official reports, Ukrainian forces have liberated more than 590 square kilometers of territory since the beginning of the year, including areas such as Mala Tokmachka, which Russian reports seem to claim they capture al