With Russian forces gaining slowly on the battlefield, Ukraine hopes its long-range drone campaign will help persuade Vladimir Putin to change course.

Russia has lost around 1,121,570 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on Oct. 13.

Gould-Davies, a Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who has served as the U.K. ambassador to Belarus, wrote recently that foreign-policy setbacks and economic challenges have put Russia in a bind,

On Saturday, the SBU said its elite Alpha unit’s long-range drones had successfully hit the Bashneft-UNPZ oil refinery in Ufa, some 1,400 kilometres from Ukraine. The plant is one of the largest refineries in Russia, supplying fuel and lubricants to the Russian army.

Russian drone and missile strikes caused blackouts across large swaths of Ukraine, damaged residential buildings and injured at least 20 people in Kyiv, authorities said.

Russia’s coal industry has become one of the main economic casualties of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine, as sanctions, rising costs and weak prices have plunged miners into their worst crisis in more than 30 years.