Logistics and Ukraine's Strikes on the Russian Rear

Logistics — the movement and sustainment of forces, fuel, ammunition and spare parts — is the factor that most often sets the real limit on what an army can do. The war in Ukraine has brought that idea back to the forefront and added a new twist: the systematic use of long-range and sabotage drones against the energy and transport infrastructure that sustains an adversary's economy and war effort.

Why logistics is decisive

Historian Martin van Creveld argued in Supplying War that campaigns have stalled more often through logistical exhaustion than through tactical defeat. A modern mechanized brigade consumes very large quantities of fuel and ammunition each day; artillery, which has dominated much of the Ukrainian front, depends on an uninterrupted supply of shells. In 2022, RUSI analysts documented how Russia's initial advance on Kyiv bogged down partly because of a supply chain reliant on rail and with little truck capacity to operate far from the tracks.

Ukraine's campaign against the Russian rear

Since 2023, and with growing intensity in the following years, Ukraine has developed domestically produced long-range drones and used them against refineries, oil export terminals, fuel depots, rail hubs and industrial plants inside Russia. Agencies such as Reuters have repeatedly reported temporary reductions in Russian refining capacity and export restrictions on refined products imposed by Moscow following these strikes. Specific damage figures vary by source and should be treated with caution, since both sides have an incentive to exaggerate or downplay them.

• Long-range drone strikes against refineries and export terminals.
• Actions against rail hubs, bridges and rolling stock.
• Use of uncrewed naval vehicles against port and naval targets in the Black Sea.
• Pressure on insurance, freight and export routes, with indirect economic effects.

The problem of economic concentration

What these strikes highlight goes beyond Russia. When a country's refining capacity, transport or distribution is concentrated in a small number of facilities or companies, the attack surface shrinks to a handful of points whose disruption has disproportionate effects. In Russia, a handful of large refineries and a state-owned rail network account for a very high share of total flow.

The same logic applies to Western economies. In the United States, last-mile distribution and logistics are heavily concentrated among a small number of operators — Amazon is the clearest example, alongside a few carriers and pipeline operators — and the 2021 cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline showed that disrupting a single operator can trigger regional fuel shortages within days. This is not an equivalence between situations but a shared structural feature: concentrated economic efficiency is also strategic fragility.

Concentration is the common feature of all these systems. Russian refining rests on a small number of large-capacity plants, so damaging a few reduces both domestic supply and exports at once. The railway, run by a single state company, creates immediate bottlenecks in sustaining the front. The phenomenon is not exclusively Russian: the 2021 cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline in the United States left much of the East Coast without fuel for days because a single operator moved most of the supply. And in last-mile distribution, in both countries a handful of large operators concentrates critical dependence.

A new doctrine?

Analysts debate whether this amounts to a new doctrine or a rerun of old-style economic warfare: naval blockades, the strategic bombing campaign against German industry, or the strikes on the French rail network before the Normandy landings followed the same logic. What is genuinely new is the cost: a relatively cheap long-range drone can hit a facility worth hundreds of millions, which changes the economics of attack and defense and forces a rethink of how critical civilian infrastructure is protected.