Ukraine’s “middle strike”: How Kyiv’s forces learned to hit targets up to 300 kilometers behind the front — and why Russia can’t stop them

If the two sides have reached a kind of parity in destroying enemy logistics, then in strikes against air defense systems Ukraine’s Defense Forces clearly pulled ahead in March 2026, Mikhailov believes. “Russian superiority in ‘middle strike’ was noted by O’Leary as well. It was visible during the isolation of Ukrainian logistics in the Kursk Region and continued during the capture of the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration. Now Ukraine’s Defense Forces have at least reached parity in this respect, and in some aspects, such as the destruction and suppression of air defenses, have even surpassed the Russians,” the analyst says.

For several months already, Ukraine’s Defense Forces have been conducting a systematic campaign to disable Russian air defense systems. According to calculations by the author of the monitoring project Dnipro Osint ⟨ Harbuz ⟩, from March 2025 through March 2026 there were at least 365 recorded strikes on targets in the “middle rear,” with more than one-third of them occurring in the last three months alone. Beginning in November 2025, units of Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR), Special Operations Forces, the Unmanned Systems Forces, and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) joined the operations, while the geography of strikes expanded across the entire front and operational rear. Nearly half of all strikes targeted Russian radar stations, launchers, and other elements of the air defense network at operational depth.

According to information from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), 55 Russian air defense systems were hit over the three months of winter. Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of the AFU Unmanned Systems Forces, reported that as part of the “spring air-defense genocide” campaign, Ukrainian drone operators struck another 27 enemy air defense units in half of March alone. A monthly increase is also being recorded in the number of damaged and destroyed SAM and gun-missile air defense systems. “The enemy has found a way to knock out FPV air defense assets (comprehensively, all at once) …what can we use to oppose this? Nothing,” Russian blogger Andrey Filatov laments. Similarly, the author of the Z channel “Military Informant” writes that: “There is a feeling that if nothing is devised to counter mass Ukrainian drones using Starlink, then within a year, at a minimum in Crimea, the air defense system will either simply cease functioning or begin pulling more and more SAM systems and radars from other regions, exposing them instead.”

According to CIT analysts, the claim that Ukrainian drones equipped with Starlink terminals were used in Crimea is likely based on UAV interface data visible in strike footage — namely, a green crosshair in the center of the screen, as they write. The video signal was clearly stable, as the footage does not cut out. Starlink does not operate in Crimea, so it is fully possible that Starshield terminals were used instead, developed by SpaceX for military and secure communications needs and not subject to the same restrictions as civilian terminals. The AFU received Starshield in 2024.

The Z channel “Informant,” analyzing recent attacks on Russian territory, suggests that Ukrainian drones may have used Starlink satellite communications beyond previously established coverage zones. As supporting arguments, it cites strikes on targets dozens and hundreds of kilometers from the border, as well as sightings of drones carrying equipment resembling satellite communication terminals. On this basis, it concludes that the de facto Starlink operating zone has expanded to cover several Russian border areas: the Belgorod, Kursk, Oryol, and Bryansk regions, along with Krasnodar Krai.

In mid-March, Clément Molin mapped strikes on targets in Crimea over the previous two and a half months. These included ammunition depots, watercraft, missile launchers, air defense systems, and radar stations. Altogether, over the last three months the analyst counted more than 300 successful Ukrainian “middle strike” attacks on Russian rear areas.

At the same time, a researcher using the name Daniele from the Tochnyi open source intelligence (OSINT) team published an infographic listing 553 targets attacked by Ukrainian “middle strike” operations over the previous nine months. An OSINT researcher using the name Vitaly also marked confirmed strikes on Russian SAM systems and radar stations at operational depth. In total, he counted 72 such strikes over the last three months, including 41 in March 2026 alone.