Since early May 2023, Russia has restarted frequent long-range missile strikes deep into Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence reports.
The strikes are likely primarily aimed at degrading Ukrainian air defences, the agency notes.
Russia has started integrating unarmed, surveillance uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) into operations more frequently. These include Russian-produced SuperCam UAVs which are relatively cheap and have sufficient range to fly over the cruise missiles’ targets.
Russia has highly likely adopted this tactic in an attempt to obtain more timely battle damage assessment and improve its targeting cycle, the agency believes. However, slow surveillance UAVs are highly vulnerable to Ukrainian air defences.
