As Ukrainians gathered to mark Independence Day across the country last Sunday, Russia accused Kyiv of launching dozens of drones at a nuclear power plant in Kursk.
The attack, which sparked a large fire and destroyed parts of the plant’s infrastructure, was one of the most audacious attacks on Russian territory so far this year.
Damage was done to an auxiliary transformer and there was a 50 per cent reduction in a nuclear reactor’s operating capacity, according to Russian authorities.
Ukraine’s military refused to comment on the attack. But in a message shared shortly after it took place, President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasised his nation’s resolve in the face of Russian aggression.
“We are building a Ukraine that will have enough strength and power to live in security and peace,” he said in a video address.
“What our future will be is up to us alone.”
It is not the first or boldest attack that Ukraine has launched on Russia this year, but military experts have observed that Kyiv is bringing war to Russian territory in new ways.
Orysia Lutsevych OBE, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme and head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, told The Independent that Ukraine “has massively improved its armed forces” since the war began in February 2022.
She added: “There’s no better combat-ready army than Ukraine. With new technology, with a new way of fighting, and with determination.”
The Independent looks at some of Ukraine’s boldest attacks on Russia and how they have influenced the course of the war.
Operation Spiderweb
After 18 months and nine days of planning, Ukrainian security services launched a covert drone attack deep inside Russia on 1 June earlier this year.
The coordinated strike used 117 drones – at that point the largest drone attack on Russian air bases in the war – to target Moscow’s long-range aviation assets across five different areas: Belaya, Dyagilevo, Ivanovo Severny, Olenya and Ukrainka.
Drones were concealed in and launched from trucks on Russian territory, bypassing the geographic challenges with confirmed damage even in eastern Siberia, 2,700 miles from Ukraine.
The strike on Russia’s airbases was widely lauded by both military experts and world leaders, even earning the admiration of US president Donald Trump, who privately described it as “badass” according to Axios.
The Kursk incursion
Described by experts as the most significant attack across the border since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, the Kursk incursion saw Ukraine claim 1,000 square kilometres of Russian territory. Moscow authorities conceded that Kyiv had captured 28 settlements last year.
Ms Lutsevych described the move as being “quite successful in a way of demonstrating that Russian territory is not invincible”.
By the second half of August the front had stabilised, and in early October the Ukrainian advance had stalled.
As of March this year, Ukraine’s forces appeared to have retreated as a result of a Russian counterattack, but Moscow has not been able to regain all of the territory.
Moscow airport drone strikes
Major airports in Moscow were temporarily closed in July after a sustained Ukrainian drone attack which cancelled at least 140 flights. Russia’s defence ministry said it downed over 230 drones in the strike across the country, including 27 over the capital.
It is believed that tens of thousands of Russian civilians were affected by this, which Ms Lutsevych has described as “significant”.
“That causes a lot of problems for Russian civilians,” she said, comparing it to the citizens of Ukraine, who can’t travel by plane.
Drone strikes in the first months of 2025 forced Russia to suspend airport operations over 200 times, a record number since the start of the war, according to independent Russian outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, who cited data from the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya).
From January to May 10, 2025, Russian airports shut down a record number of 217 times, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported. In contrast, there were 58 total closures in 2023 and 91 in 2024.
A bolder strategy
Ukraine’s more brazen approach to attacking Russian soil comes after US president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that former leader Joe Biden “would not let Ukraine fight back, only defend”.
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defence, but is not allowed to play offensive. There is no chance of winning,” he said.
Ukraine’s armed forces have incorporated drones into their warfare since the early days of the war because production is relatively cheap, according to Ms Lutsevych, but its legacy in missile development dates back to Soviet times.
“They’ve taken some of this knowledge and some of the models, and they are now modernising it quickly,” she added.
Ukraine recently unveiled its devastating new ‘Flamingo’ cruise missile which can carry a warhead weighing more than one tonne and fly more than 3,000 kilometres deep into Russia.
Ms Lutsevych said that Ukraine’s bold approach to attacking Russia is an attempt to “show that Russia cannot achieve its objectives and that Russia itself is vulnerable”.
“It’s an attempt to achieve two things,” she continued. “On one hand to demonstrate to Trump and others that you can actually defeat Russia on Ukrainian territory because the goal of Ukraine is not to occupy Russia. The goal of Ukraine is to squeeze Russia out of Ukraine’s legitimate territory, and Ukrainians are saying there is a viable strategy to achieve it.
“Secondly, it is about raising the cost of the war for Russia so that it becomes unsustainable. Russians say they can fight the war forever. That is not the case – they are also facing financial pressures.”
