The Russian general staff has again interestingly evolved its tactics this past week. It seems in recent months, Russia has cycled through a gamut of different target types as a kind of ‘monthly theme’. First it was Ukrainian energy infrastructure, then recently it turned to bridges and warehouses, including the Nova Poshta postal service, and lately locomotives. But now the objective du jour has become Ukrainian telecoms, data centers, and internet infrastructure.
An open-source tally circulating on X lists the following figures for Kiev city and Kiev Region:
▫️January 2026: 109 strikes
▫️February 2026: 51 strikes
▫️March 2026: 21 strikes
▫️April 2026: 32 strikes
▫️May 2026: 90 strikes
▫️June 2026: 83 strikes
▫️July 2026: 111 strikes
▫️August 2026: 113 strikes
▫️September 2026: 155 strikes
It began last week when Russia struck Ukraine’s largest cellphone-telecom and internet operator KyivStar which, incidentally, it again struck last night. Recall that ex-CIA head Mike Pompeo was given a directorship at KyivStar for unknown reasons, presumably as it gives the CIA a direct control pipeline into Ukraine’s internet and mobile data, allowing the control, blackmail, and surveillance of anyone in the country.
KyivStar also happens to have a channel—which the company brags about—that shows a 24/7 live feed of “the Kremlin burning” that is meant to be a kind of twistedly soothing Ukrainian ASMR:
Well, it seems they’ve now received a taste of their own “meditative” practice.
List of infrastructure hit in the new campaign:
MSM outlets have begun picking up on Russia’s new shift, noting that a hundred thousand plus internet customers have already experienced outages:
Russia has opened a new front in its campaign against Ukraine, hitting several datacentres and internet providers in Kyiv this week in an apparent attempt to weaken the digital backbone of the economy.
About 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region suffered temporary internet outages after strikes on Wednesday and Thursday, according to Ukraine’s digital transformation ministry.
On Friday, another drone strike in central Kyiv hit the offices of Datagroup, one of Ukraine’s largest telecommunications companies, killing four people.
“Russia has targeted major Ukrainian datacentres, seeking to disrupt the flow of information,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X.
In the latest round, Russia even targeted Ukrainian science and technological centers, which evoked immediate outcries from pearl-clutching Euro-pharisees:
One of the perhaps inadvertent targets was reportedly a legendary Ukrainian scientist responsible for much of the country’s arms industry:
Former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Gorbulin, has been injured. His assistant died as a result of the strike on the building of the National Academy of Sciences.
Gorbulin’s office was located one floor below the epicenter of the impact.
It’s difficult to know for certain precisely what the Russian strategy is with these attacks, but here are four possibilities:
1. Russia has chosen to completely degrade and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure in every possible sphere of life in order to foment exactly the type of popular unrest that Zelensky attempted to precipitate against Putin’s government.
2. Russia is merely acting in retaliatory fashion, which still appears to be the official MO as described by Peskov who stated that the latest string of attacks was “in response” to Ukraine’s recent 40-day operation and strikes against Moscow, et cetera:
3. Russia may simply have reached the technological ability to consistently and systematically sustain such attacks, given the vast increase in drone production, particularly of the jet-powered variety, as well as surveillance capabilities which will be discussed later.
4. Perhaps due to battlefield stagnations, as in the recent Lyman “collapse”, Russia has decided that it must leverage the economic war much more heavily in order to bring Ukraine to heel.
As per the third item above, a variety of drones and missiles have been used in recent strikes, including the new Banderols which were seen flying over an Odessa beach, with the second video below showing a similar-looking Geran-5 hitting Lvov earlier:
Euromaidan Press has noted the advancements which continue to stymy Ukrainian defenders:
Russia is making its attack drones harder to stop, and Ukraine is racing to keep up
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) September 28, 2026
A new Geran-5 variant can correct its route by matching images of the ground below, without satellite navigation, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Polkovnyk GSh reported. That means jamming GPS,… pic.twitter.com/5STCmyDQNp
The above piece describes a new Geran-5 variant which can navigate autonomously:
Russia has fielded a Geran-5 variant that can steer by images of the ground below without satellite navigation, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Polkovnyk GSh reported.
They go into further detail, stating the Geran-5 variant has a module which essentially does terrain-matching like many much more expensive advanced cruise missiles are capable of doing:
The channel labels it the Geran-5 K5. Its DSMAC-type module corrects the drone’s route by matching images of the ground below against stored references, like the one on Russia’s Kh-101 cruise missile. The K5 also has a new fuselage, the channel said.
Because it flies faster than the Geran-4 and the standard Geran-5, it is often mistaken for Dan-T cruise missiles, the channel said. Official Ukrainian sources have not confirmed the K5 designation or the DSMAC-class system, Militarnyi noted.
The base Geran-5 carries a warhead of about 90 kg and cruises at 450–600 km/h, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) found in January. It relies on a jam-resistant Kometa-M12 satellite navigation system and a mesh modem. HUR’s component list includes no terrain-matching optics.
Ukraine’s top radioelectronics expert Serhiy Flash also noted on his channel that Russia used a new tactic on the latest strikes on Inkom business center in Kiev. Note the video below which shows the strike filmed from the ground, but also from a Russian drone reconnoitering from above:
Serhiy Flash writes of this episode:
The enemy released a video of the attack on the "Incom" business center. This sparked many questions and theories: "How is this possible?"
Let me state this clearly: there were no secret satellites, no FPV drones attached to the "Shahed," no Russian agents, and no mysterious UAVs involved.
The enemy attacked the "Incom" office with a "Geran-5" drone, and simultaneously, a jet-powered "Shahed" drone flew towards Kyiv. It circled the area of the "Incom" attack at an altitude of almost 3 kilometers. It served as a mesh repeater for radio signals for the "Geran-5" and, at the same time, recorded (and immediately transmitted) video of the attack on "Incom."
Then, this "Shahed" flew outside of Kyiv and destroyed a "McDonald's" warehouse.
Undoubtedly, this was a complex drone operation by Russia, requiring precise calculations and coordination between pilots. I am even convinced that they were sitting next to each other.
His provided map:
His point again brings us back to the recent uptick in Russian “MESH” repeaters, which are being used to give real-time feeds from drones overflying Kiev that allows Russia to monitor its strikes from the air as they happen. In this case, the drone providing ISR BDA itself flew to destroy a different target after finishing its surveillance work. This is just a preview of what will be happening times a hundred when the Russian Rassvet (“Dawn”) satellite system is fully operational.
Firebrand Rada MP Goncharenko was in outrage at the inability of Ukrainian air defense to shoot down the drones, and stated that Kiev’s skies are now under Russian air superiority:
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s PM stated that severe internet disruptions could occur if Russia continues such systematic strikes:
There is a threat of internet disruption in Ukraine due to Russian army strikes on data centers, according to Prime Minister Koretsky.
▪️”Authorities” and companies are trying to protect critical digital infrastructure: some facilities are being buried underground, data is being transferred to cloud storage, or physically moved abroad, the head of government stated.
▪️Koretsky noted that Ukraine is preparing for the worst-case scenario in the event of further strikes on data centers and telecommunications infrastructure.
One data center and telecom developer already announced its closure due to the strikes:
The recent victims included Ukrainian drone manufacturer Pegasus Arms which apparently ceased operations after visit by an Iskander:
Amidst the latest strikes, internal discussions have again turned toward Ukraine’s growing budget black hole. Zelensky’s ex-press secretary Iuliia Mendel reacts to the news below:
Ukraine’s own officials now say the war costs $155 billion a year — $175 billion in 2027. The budget covers about $100 billion. The rest is a hole of $70 billion, with only a fraction of the sources even identified. A nation of this size cannot bleed like this forever and still exist. They are the price of a war that is consuming people, cities, industry and the next generation while we are told to wait for better terms. Every year without a deal is not a stronger position. It is fewer people, less land, a weaker army and a smaller country left to save. The hole grows. The reconstruction bill already approaches $588 billion. The economy is barely standing. If we keep waiting for perfect terms, we will negotiate over ruins. Move toward a peace agreement while Ukraine still has people to protect.
Ukrainian activist Marta Havryshko reacts:
Ukraine is already $75 billion short for next year’s war, the government says.
The year hasn’t even begun, and the money is already gone.
They still haven’t figured out how to plug the $26 billion hole for 2026, and now they’re back asking for tens of billions more.
And for what?
For death. Destruction. Blood.
Not reconstruction. Not rebuilding shattered cities. Not bringing Ukrainians home. Not giving people a future.
For war.
Maybe it’s time to break this vicious cycle of violence. Maybe it’s time to stop feeding the military-industrial complex and its army of lobbyists in expensive suits.
Maybe it’s time to start rebuilding Ukraine instead of financing its continued destruction.
And, as always, with someone else’s money — European taxpayers’ money.
As ever, the war remains multi-dimensional. There is the battlefield, the political and diplomatic spheres, economic sphere, and several others. Russia has recently stumbled on the purely battlefield sphere, given the slowed advances of 2026 and late setbacks like in the Lyman situation. But it seems in compensation, it has proportionately pulled ahead of Ukraine in the other spheres, increasing the economic, political, and diplomatic pain to the point of putting Ukraine’s future in doubt.
As we had theorized in previous analyses, one explanation for the above is that Russia has concluded the current drone-centric strategic ‘meta’ of the battlefield does not allow one to solely privilege the battlefield sphere, and as such—for the time being—the other spheres have to be proportionally leveraged. The idea may be to wait out for more favorable future developments that could nullify the drone threat while husbanding resources until such time that sizeable battlefield advances could again be risked.
One such prominent development that Russia could obviously be waiting for is the advent of the Rassvet (“Russian Starlink”) satellite system which even many Ukrainian commentators believe would be a disaster for the AFU. It would allow Russia to target the Ukrainian “rear” with tenfold intensity in a way that could compound into major consequences for the frontline, which would facilitate the ability to muster greater forward movement once more. That’s not to mention the fact that it would greatly aid frontline ISR and communications in general as well, which would give far greater abilities of finding and targeting Ukrainian troops and, specifically, opposing drone units for destruction which, again, would facilitate the ability to advance troops forward.
In short, though the war is clearly not close to an end, Ukraine’s macro-economic indicators continue to show major red flags, and this will particularly worsen should Russia’s new cycling campaign against various categories of Ukrainian infrastructure turn out to be a systematically long-standing one.
Ultimately, we know the popular axiom that aerial campaigns alone do not win wars. This common rationale came mostly as a result of US’s foreign conflicts, wherein bombing a country thousands of miles away from one’s own homeland and major supply lines failed to achieve capitulation. The Ukraine situation notably differs in that Russia borders the country and will be able to leverage unprecedented direct pressure of every variety onto the Ukrainian state, which will be extremely difficult to withstand in the face of current logistical, socio-political, and macroeconomic indicators.
That said, the conflict will clearly continue for quite a while longer and Russia appears to be banking on Europe’s slow deterioration and eventual inability to supply Ukraine’s funding until the inevitable conclusion.
Until that time, Russian forces continue to move forward, even if more slowly than before:
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