Muscovites are gradually getting used to the sounds of explosions. Since the beginning of the summer, Ukraine has increased long-distance strikes inside the territory of its invader. On Tuesday, August 18 alone, the kyiv army sent no fewer than 620 drones against the Moscow region, according to a count by the mayor of the Russian capital. Two days earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have shot down 822 drones across the country in a single night.
While the front line no longer moves, the conflict is concentrated in the air. At the end of June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a forty-day campaign aimed at intensifying strikes in Russia. A response to the increase in missile and drone fire carried out by Moscow since the winter, justified the head of state on X. These multiple bombings on civilian infrastructures are causing a significant increase in the number of victims on both sides.
Economic circles worried
In Russia, Ukrainian drones regularly hit refineries and oil depots, causing a fuel crisis over the summer. Since mid-July, kyiv has also targeted the warehouses of the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries – nicknamed “the Russian Amazon” – as well as ports and ships in the Black Sea. A “problem” for Moscow, which “presents a serious weakness in terms of interception”, summarizes Natia Seskuria, researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, to CNN.
The shelling of around twenty Wildberries centers, according to the Deutsche Welle count, was particularly commented on by the international press. It owes nothing to chance, tells franceinfo Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Forum on Ukraine at the British think tank Chatham House. The expert underlines the “central” role in the Russian economy of the e-commerce giant, on which a large number of small and medium-sized businesses depend.
With this campaign, kyiv is seeking to permanently weaken Russia's economy, already damaged by four years of Western sanctions. “More than 10% of GDP now goes to defense, the state deficit is widening and completely swallowing up the country's economy,” explains Ulrich Bounat, researcher associated with Euro Créative and author of Hybrid war in Ukraine, what prospects?. Boosted by the explosion in fuel prices, inflation even reached 6% over one year in July 2026 according to data from Rosta, the Russian INSEE.
As a result, economic circles display a form of gloom and are warning more and more openly about the risks posed by these incursions of the conflict on Russian territory. In addition to the potential bankruptcy of thousands of small businesses, the attacks on Wildberries "risk having an impact on the banking sector, the company being very indebted", underlines Ulrich Bounat.
“There is a frustration, a worry, that the war is dragging on and that it’s not really winnable.”
Ulrich Bounat, associate researcher at Euro Créative
at franceinfo
“Killing the civilian economy is killing the country,” the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, was alarmed at the beginning of August, reports the independent media Meduza. “A broken Russia is bad for the balance of the world,” warned oligarch Andreï Melnitchenko a month earlier, in an extremely rare interview with The Economist. The warning signals do not only come from the country's economic elite. “Putin's economic resilience depends not only on energy revenues and financial reserves, but also on the willingness of households and businesses to absorb the costs of war,” explains Yerzhan Tokbolat, professor of finance at the University of Belfast (Northern Ireland), on The Conversation website. But it risks being "more difficult [for the Kremlin] to maintain the impression that the war can continue without profoundly upsetting daily life in Russia", believes the academic.
“Seeing buildings on fire is so destabilizing”
These Ukrainian offensives make the war, initiated by the Kremlin in February 2022, increasingly visible to the Russian population. The sounds of explosions have become regular for residents of the Moscow region, as for those in the border territories. Images of burning buildings and queues in front of gas stations as well.
A situation in line with the strategy displayed by the Ukrainian president “to bring the war” to Russia. “Seeing buildings on fire is so destabilizing that it has a considerable moral impact on civilians, who thought they were far from war,” underlines Orysia Lutsevych. Enough to shatter "an informal social pact which was established between the Kremlin and the inhabitants of large Russian cities" after the start of the war, according to which the authorities would keep the conflict away from civilians in exchange for support for power, summarizes the Russian anthropologist at ENS Paris Alexandra Arkhipova to CNN.
As a result, “opinion surveys show that the population is increasingly embarrassed by this war,” underlines Ulrich Bounat. A poll conducted in July by the Levada Institute showed that 66% of those questioned supported the actions of their army in Ukraine, compared to 78% a year earlier. A high approval rating, but falling. It is above all the economic impact of the conflict which is being scrutinized by the Kremlin. And faced with the soaring cost of war, household morale is significantly declining, according to the Levada Institute indicator. In June, it fell to 94 (on a neutral base of 100), a figure not seen since the start of the conflict in February 2022.
What to put pressure on the Kremlin? “Russians could blame Ukraine rather than their own government, while attacks on civilian workplaces could strengthen patriotic sentiment,” warns Yerzhan Tokbolat. In any case, "we should not count on the establishment of a resistance movement against the war: there is no space in which Russian society can express itself", underlines Orysia Lutsevych. “The government has further reduced civil liberties since the start of the conflict,” recalls Ulrich Bounat. Latest example: the banning of the small anti-war party Yabloko at the beginning of August, and the sentencing of its vice-president to eleven years in prison.
“Russian leaders still think they can win the war of attrition”
In fact, “Vladimir Putin is counting above all on the apathy of the population,” underlines Ulrich Bounat. Ukraine is betting that economic pressure will force Moscow to return to the negotiating table. Without success for the moment, Vladimir Putin remaining inflexible. “He long believed that he had time on his side, and that thanks to a resilient economy and a reservoir of human strength, he would eventually prevail,” adds the researcher. “At present, Russian leaders still think they can win the war of attrition,” explains Orysia Lutsevych. “But the campaign of strikes shows Russia that Ukraine can destroy resources that it thought were untouchable.”
Faced with Russian inflexibility, the escalation seems destined to continue in the air. Still dependent on Western powers, Ukraine has been developing its own cruise missiles, the Flamingo, since 2025, which are much more destructive than drones. Experts expect their use to increase in the coming months. kyiv could even be capable of launching its own ballistic missiles within "three to six months", promised former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov to CBS.
"The Ukrainians no longer have a way to defend themselves against ballistic missiles. They will try to do the same thing as the Russians."
Ulrich Bounat, associate researcher at Euro Créative
at franceinfo
It is difficult to imagine, for the moment, that this rise in power will make Vladimir Putin bend. The Russian president is described by his entourage as absolutist, isolated and cut off from information from the front, a Le Monde investigation reported in June. Only a “humiliating defeat in Crimea” could change the situation, judges Orysia Lutsevych. The Ukrainians, “who have control of the airspace” of the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, have been increasing attacks there since the spring. At the beginning of August, the video of the fall of a Ukrainian drone on a beach of a seaside resort, which killed seven people, went viral.
