Over the past weeks, headlines in international reporting on Russia's war have described Ukraine's strikes deep into Russian territory with a common note.
Each incident involves a different event, but collectively, they indicate that Ukraine has become an active participant rather than a passive object.
The Russian war against Ukraine is often described as a war of attrition, but in reality, this attrition does not affect all participants equally.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Ukraine has allocated approximately 40% of its GDP to defence spending during the war period, placing it among the highest levels of military mobilisation globally. Russia, by comparison, has spent roughly 7-8% of its GDP on the war effort.
Ukraine functions as a wartime state where survival dictates economic and political priorities.
Russia, however, conducts a large-scale, costly war rooted in external imperial projection rather than internal defence. The Moscow federal budget for 2026 has figures that look unprecedented not only for modern Russia but also in comparison with specific estimates from the late Soviet period. The Kremlin has shifted its economy to a wartime footing, with the budget indicating not readiness for a "peace deal", but ongoing war consolidation, despite economic costs and social decline. Russia's 2026 Budget: Built for War, Not Peace
This framing is crucial for understanding the war's durability: in Ukraine, spending on war links to survival, in Russia, to strategic ambition.
Ukraine produced an outcome the Kremlin did not anticipate. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the underlying assumption was that Ukraine was expected to collapse under the weight of a larger, better-equipped army.
Instead of failing, Ukraine became one of the world's fast-adapting wartime innovation systems. (The Paradox of Russia's War: Making Ukraine a Leader in Drone Warfare)
A key element of this transformation is the rapid evolution of drone warfare: Ukraine has demonstrated how relatively low-cost platforms can be continuously upgraded, repurposed and scaled in response to real-time battlefield conditions.
Ukrainians also integrated civilian technological capacity into defence production in ways not common to conventional military systems: when software engineers, startup structures, volunteer networks and state institutions operate together. The result is not simply technological innovation, but a structural adaptation under pressure.
Despite the Kremlin's budget built for war and Russia's confidence in its vast territory as an advantage,the Ukrainian strategy of deep strikes reveals a vulnerability that was unexpected for the whole world and the aggressor alike.
For decades, Russia's strategic identity was built on a simple geographical assumption: from the World War II narrative to Cold War logic, the main idea was that even if the front line shifts, the Russian rear remains fundamentally secure. Though Ukraine now proves that this is no longer true.
Over the past months, Ukrainian long-range strikes have repeatedly reached targets previously considered outside the practical scope of wartime risk: oil refineries, fuel depots, air bases and elements of military-industrial infrastructure have been hit across multiple regions of Russia.
Besides the physical and economic impacts, the overall effect of Ukrainian strikes also influences a less obvious but strategically crucial area: reputation.
The concept of internal security and the myth the Kremlin told its society about the war outside Russia's territory, far away, no longer has meaning.
This erosion of "safe distance" changes not only security assumptions, but also the psychological framing of the war itself.
For the whole world, it also sends an important message: as was the case with the idea of Russia as the strongest army at the beginning of the full-scale war, the notion of safe territories vanishes,modern warfare increasingly erases the distinction between front line and rear territory.
When this illusion of untouchable rear is disrupted, the reputation that is so meaningful to Russian imperial ambition falters.
Ukrainian strikes matter not only because of what they destroy, but becausethey force Russia to rethink what distance can no longer protect.
Kyiv reshapes assumptions about security, distance and vulnerability within Russia while simultaneously demonstrating Ukraine's capacity to operate as an adaptive, technologically driven actor in a highly asymmetric war.
Ukraine is no longer only absorbing the war, but actively shaping its dynamics.
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This publication was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It's content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.
