By Robert Johnson*

LONDON | 7 August 2025 (WorldView) — In the vast, high-tech chessboard of modern war, Ukraine’s drone campaign has turned a corner in its conflict with Russia—forcing Moscow to defend its skies and giving President Volodymyr Zelensky something he has long lacked: credible bargaining power.

“Putin’s reluctance to meet his Ukrainian counterpart so far has often made it appear that he doesn’t think Ukraine has enough bargaining power to enter direct negotiations,” writes Marcel Plichta, a PhD candidate in international relations at the University of St Andrews. But this is changing. “One thing that may be helping to shift the balance in Zelensky’s favour at this stage in the war is Ukraine’s enhanced drone capability.”

In a new study analysing Ukraine’s use of long-range one-way attack (OWA) drones between mid-2022 and early 2025, Plichta finds that Kyiv’s evolving drone strategy has outperformed expectations—not only inflicting costly damage but reshaping the battlefield in ways that even NATO strategists are beginning to study closely.

Disrupting the Illusion of Distance

One of the defining features of Russia’s war strategy has been to insulate its population from the consequences of the invasion—keeping the war an abstraction, something that happens “over there” on Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian drones have made that insulation impossible.

Attacks on Moscow have caused “disruptions to air travel within Russia and forced the Russian government to divert dozens of air defence systems to ensure that the capital is protected,” Plichta writes. The symbolism is significant: this is not just a strategic vulnerability but a psychological one. A population that believed itself immune from the direct costs of war is now being forced to reckon with its consequences.

Unlike traditional surveillance drones, OWA drones are meant to strike. Designed to detonate on or above their target, they are inexpensive, difficult to trace, and—when deployed en masse—challenging to stop. “While individual drones are often easy to shoot down,” Plichta notes, “large numbers of long-range OWA drones attacking multiple targets are tricky to stop.”

This is due to a key structural weakness: geography. “Russia has lots of air defence systems, but it is also the largest country on earth and cannot defend everything at once.” In essence, Ukraine has created what Plichta calls an “air defence dilemma”—a situation in which Russia must “pick and choose what areas of the country to defend and which to leave vulnerable.”

A Calculated Strike on the Russian Economy

While headline-grabbing drone strikes on the Kremlin and Moscow skyscrapers may capture the imagination, the more devastating long-term effect has been economic. Ukraine has concentrated its OWA attacks on a soft underbelly of the Russian economy: its fossil fuel infrastructure.

“Independent estimates suggest that the damage to Russian oil facilities caused by OWA drones, from late 2024 to early 2025, could have cost Russia more than US$700 million,” writes Plichta. That figure alone would be significant. But Ukraine’s strategy was more than sporadic harassment—it was systematic.

“In early 2024, Ukraine launched a large series of strikes on Russian oil infrastructure. By April, NATO officials claimed that the strikes had temporarily halted approximately 15% of Russia’s refining capacity, caused a halt in exports and caused fuel price spikes in Russia.”

These are not minor disruptions. Russia’s state revenues rely heavily on oil and gas exports. Targeting oil depots, refineries, and storage facilities creates supply-chain chaos, reduces state income, and inflames domestic costs—all while forcing the Kremlin to divert resources from the front lines to homeland defence.

As Plichta points out, this has forced visible changes. “In early 2023, the Russian military placed Pantsir air defence systems on Moscow rooftops to intercept OWA drones.” In a further sign of public anxiety, systems were deployed in “public places to reassure the public.”

A Shift in Diplomatic Power

For Zelensky, this shift in the air war has real diplomatic consequences. His early 2025 call for a “ceasefire in the sky and at sea” was made not from a position of desperation, but of strength—backed by the persistent threat of long-range drone retaliation.

The impact has been noted beyond Ukraine. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed Putin appealed to the U.S. in an attempt to pressure Ukraine into halting drone attacks—an indication that even Russia’s allies perceive domestic political pressure mounting.

In a geopolitical twist, Zelensky reportedly offered Donald Trump a “mega deal” to share Ukraine’s drone technology in exchange for renewed U.S. weapons deliveries. While unconfirmed, the very idea points to a new kind of strategic bargaining: battlefield leverage in exchange for tech-sharing and security guarantees.

Implications Beyond Ukraine

The lessons from Ukraine’s drone war are not limited to its conflict. “My findings that an OWA drone campaign can impose serious costs on defenders like Russia are consequential for how other countries should organise their air defences,” writes Plichta.

These drones have three dangerous advantages:

• Affordability: They can be built or bought for tens of thousands of dollars—far cheaper than precision missiles.
• Range and Precision: Even without high-end guidance, they can navigate circuitous routes and reach critical targets.
• Proliferation: Unlike sophisticated missile systems, OWA drones are easily exported or reverse-engineered.

This has already begun to affect other theatres of conflict. The UK has had to intercept Houthi-launched drones threatening commercial shipping in the Red Sea. And in response to the global drone threat, the UK is testing “Dragonfire,” a ship-mounted laser air defence system meant to provide a scalable, high-efficiency countermeasure.

As Plichta notes, “Countries that might not benefit from procuring OWA drones may still have to find ways to intercept hostile ones.” From Israel to Iran, Saudi Arabia to Taiwan, the reality of drone warfare is becoming central to national defence doctrines.

The Future of Asymmetric Power

Ukraine’s use of OWA drones represents a textbook case of asymmetric warfare in the 21st century: using low-cost tools to force high-cost responses. Every drone costs Ukraine perhaps $20,000–50,000; each interceptor missile Russia fires in return can cost hundreds of thousands. The imbalance is by design.

Even as Kyiv invests in conventional missiles and air capabilities, “OWA drones have proven too effective to ignore,” Plichta concludes. “For the Russian leadership, these attacks create a serious dilemma and force them to pick what parts of the country are ‘worth’ defending.”

This war is no longer confined to tanks, trenches, or front lines. It has become a contest of algorithms, drones, data, and dispersed destruction. In this new phase, Ukraine has not only survived but adapted—deploying 21st-century tools against a 20th-century invasion.

What began as desperation has evolved into deterrence. And Zelensky, armed with a fleet of low-tech but high-impact drones, is in a stronger position to negotiate the war’s next chapter. (WorldView)

*This article is adapted from an insightful analysis by Marcel Plichta, a doctoral candidate in international relations at the University of St Andrews.

Image: Ukraine’s unmanned system. Source: European Security & Defence