Ukraine Military History Institute
Russia will adapt, and the adaptation is the damage
Rob Lee asks the obvious question about the middle strike campaign: what effect will it actually have on the battlefield? Dmytro Putiata's first answer is that he assumes the effect will be huge. His second answer is the more interesting one.
He grants the standard objection before anyone raises it. Yes, Russia will adapt. It always does. But the question, he says, is when, and at what price, and what Russia will lose in the process.
His reasoning rests on a simple constraint: you cannot adapt to everything at once. Every adjustment Russia makes to survive the strikes gives something up somewhere else. That turns the usual framing around. Adaptation is not proof the campaign failed. In Putiata's account, it is one of the ways the campaign works.
A radar has two choices, and both are losses
Putiata makes the point concrete with a single system, the P-18 radar. A radar like that exists to cover a defined area, which he puts loosely at something like 60 kilometres. That coverage is its job.
Once Ukraine targets it, the crew has two options. Stay roughly where it is, give or take a couple of kilometres, and be struck again. Or move deeper. And the moment it moves deeper, Putiata says, it is already losing and missing something: the area it was placed to watch.
He applies the same logic to air defence. A system pulled back out of reach still survives, but it no longer protects what it was protecting. Survival bought by distance is coverage given up.
The depots have already moved twice
The clearest evidence Putiata offers is about where Russia stores things. Ammunition depots, fuel depots and warehouses are, he says, all on the current target list.
Russia used to place them 60 to 80 kilometres from the front, a distance chosen because it was out of reach for HIMARS. Now, by his account, that distance is around 120 kilometres.
He expects it to grow further. Ukraine will force Russia, he predicts, to put them at least 200 kilometres from the front line. In some cases, he says, Russia is already moving warehouses into Russia itself, where it believes they are better protected.
Each step back is a step away from the troops those depots supply.
Distance shows up as time, fuel and trucks
Putiata traces what that distance does. Russian logistics suffer: the trucks are being hit, the ammunition depots are being hit. Resupply and rotation become harder, take much more time, and burn much more fuel. And fuel, he adds, is itself being struck.
His conclusion is about what sustains an army. It is not only a question of whether you are killing enemy soldiers. You may be able to stop an enemy's advance that way, but the better approach is to combine the two, and in his words, Ukraine is finally combining. He expects to see much more of it.
The payoff he names for Ukraine is time: room to prepare better while the other side's supply lines lengthen.
Lee: a year ago, trucks could drive close
Lee measures the change against a year earlier. Ukraine has long had good intelligence on where targets are, which Putiata qualifies as being with the help of Western allies.
Lee's reason for more optimism now is that the relationship has matured. At the start, he says, new structures had to be built from nothing and the trust was not there. Some trust issues may remain, given what some foreign politicians say, but the connections between Western militaries, intelligence agencies and Ukraine's have, in his words, improved dramatically. The targeting process is more sophisticated.
The practical result, as Lee describes it, is that Russian logistics were significantly easier to run a year ago. Trucks could move much closer to the front line. They cannot do that easily now. Putiata puts a figure on it: in a lot of cases, he says, strikes are landing around 20 kilometres out.
Every protective layer costs assault troops
Lee then follows the adaptation through to the manpower bill. Russia is already pulling fuel and logistics back from the line. That means more trucks, or smaller ones, or ATVs instead. Putiata adds the next requirement: those vehicles need covering too.
So Russia needs EW and counter-UAS teams and air defence teams to protect its supply. Lee's point is that these are soldiers who cannot be assault troops. Every layer of protection for the rear is drawn from the people who would otherwise be attacking.
His conclusion: Russia will adapt, as it always does, but the adaptations make it less effective and less efficient, and that makes offensive operations harder.
The same pressure opens a door for Ukraine
Lee also sees an offensive use for this. If Ukraine can degrade logistics in one part of the front, it can try to isolate specific formations, making supply very difficult for one or two brigades at a time. That, he argues, could set conditions for successful offensive operations.
He fences the claim carefully. He is not saying Ukraine will drive to Crimea. He points instead to recent operations that succeeded but, in his view, could have gone far better. The suggestion is that operational strikes are what would close that gap.
What to watch
- Depot distances. Putiata predicts Russian ammunition and fuel storage will be pushed to at least 200 kilometres from the front. Reporting on where Russian depots are struck will show whether that is happening.
- Radar and air defence coverage gaps. If Russian systems pull back rather than stay and absorb strikes, the strike pattern should shift deeper as the systems do, and the areas they used to cover should be hit more easily.
- A brigade-sized isolation attempt. Lee's offensive case is specific: cut logistics to one or two brigades, then attack. An operation shaped that way would be the test of whether middle strike can set conditions for manoeuvre.