Forty days for communications
One side announced an operation to "force the enemy to peace." Forty days later, the other reported that the operation had "drowned in the Black Sea." Both reports were issued almost simultaneously, both sound confident, and both, upon closer inspection, describe the same event—only from the side of the crosshairs that favors the one reporting it.
The question that no report likes is simple. It's not about who won the information war, but about who paid for this forty-day symmetry and why the scores were so different.
Concept: Old bet on a long shot
On June 25, the Kyiv leadership announced a forty-day pressure campaign against Russia. The objective was formulated in the broadest terms: to intensify attacks on oil refining, logistics, and energy production deep within Russian territory and "force Russia to peace." In Kyiv's rhetoric, the strikes on oil refineries were dubbed "long-range sanctions": economic pressure, delivered not by paper, but by combat. The deadline was tied to the Russian electoral cycle, the September elections.
By late June and early July, the situation on the front was unfavorable for Kyiv: Russian troops were advancing in several sectors, capturing a number of settlements, including Kostiantynivka in the DPR. In such a situation, the side that is losing ground on the line of contact logically shifts its efforts to where it can operate—deep in the enemy's rear. The calculation here is entirely rational. A long-range strike doesn't require a breakthrough and allows for the enemy's economy to be targeted while bypassing its army.
The plan, if we put it together from public statements and the actual picture of the attacks, was based on four directions:
- attacks on oil refining and the fuel market, counting on shortages and rising prices;
- attacks on logistics and warehouses, on the infrastructure of everyday life;
- mass launches drones for reloading Defense;
- sabotage activity deep within Russian territory.
Let me clarify right away, because it's crucial for everything that follows. We know the operation's goals from the opposing side's narrative: we read about Kyiv's actual plans from those who benefit from demonstrating that the plan failed. Anything labeled "sacrifice," "decapitation" (a blow to the military-political leadership), or "forty days of terror" is an interpretation of the plan by an interested observer, not the plan itself. We take as a working basis only what is confirmed by the actual attack data.
But even if we take the technical essence—strikes in the rear to break the enemy's will from within—the origins of this idea are immediately clear. It's nearly a hundred years old. The bet that bombing factories and fuel would cause panic and pressure on the authorities is the underlying idea of all 20th-century air warfare theory. And it almost never worked as its authors promised. Germany was bombed for years, and military production grew until the end of 1944. Britain was bombed—society consolidated, not rebelled. The logic of "hurt the enemy in the rear, and he'll sue for peace" sounds convincing in theory but consistently fails in practice, because pain in the rear and the capitulation of the authorities are different things, and one doesn't automatically lead to the other.
So Kyiv's bet wasn't crazy; it was old. And old bets don't fail right away—that's why they seem viable for a while.
Sky: Record-Breaking Swarms and the Price of Resilience
Nighttime over the Moscow region in July became routine. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that over 6000 drones were launched toward the capital region in the month—around two hundred per night on average, a previously unprecedented density. The Ministry of Defense claimed over 21 intercepted drones in the month, with peaks of up to a thousand per day. These figures are just estimates, not independently verifiable, and should be taken as orders of magnitude rather than as precise counts.
The logic of the "swarm" is simple: to expose weak points in a layered defense with a mass of targets and guide at least a few drones to the target. It worked, to some extent. Drones reached oil refineries in Omsk, Saratov, Syzran, Ryazan, and Yaroslavl, causing fires and shutting down individual installations. In some regions, this resulted in queues at gas stations and a temporary price increase.
It's more honest not to paint a picture of complete control here. The increase in the range and accuracy of Ukrainian drones during this period is a fact, not propaganda. Isolated breakthroughs to oil refineries and fuel shortages demonstrate that Russian air defenses were operating at a cost: the depth of the rear does not negate the vulnerability of a specific target. Resilience was ensured not by the country's size per se, but by expensive but invisible work: redistribution of flows, reserves, and accelerated repairs. The fuel crisis, which was the mainstay, did not become systemic. But it also doesn't work to claim that everything was under complete control.
Rear: Why the Same Punch Costs Differently
This is where the real mechanics begin, and it's more interesting than any rhetoric. Both sides were targeting the same things: fuel, ports, logistics, industry. The blows were inverse, the consequences were different. And the reason isn't that one side's attack was "sanctions" and the other was "terror." The reason is the size and depth of the economy.
Since July 22, foreign vessels have virtually ceased calling at Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhny. Formally, the corridor wasn't closed. But a port doesn't rely on berths, but on the willingness of shipowners and insurers to take risks. As soon as the insurance premium and the risk of impact make calling unprofitable, the port shuts down with its berths intact. Berths are there, but no ships. There's nothing to handle.
Then the entire chain breaks down: port, terminal, warehouse, workshop. Iron ore exports for the first half of the year were down 25,4 percent, foreign exchange earnings were down 26,3 percent. The Poltava and Yuzhny Mining and Processing Plants (MPPs—plants where ore is crushed and enriched before export) were shut down for weeks. Ships stopped sailing, port terminals filled up, followed by warehouses at the plants, and without exports, enrichment and mining operations had to be halted. The naval blockade, through logistics, translated into a shutdown of factories.
The same arithmetic applies to grain. Shipping via Constanta, Romania, adds such a premium to the price per ton for freight, handling, and military insurance that logistics alone eats up to a third of the final price—even before the cost of the grain itself is factored in. Domestic purchase prices for sunflower, rapeseed, and wheat are falling. Farmers receive less, are forced to sell, and reduce their sowing.
The difference in the outcome, if you look at the numbers, is the difference between an economy with depth and reserves, and one with only a handful of them. A large economy with extensive internal logistics can replenish the loss of an oil refinery within weeks, and locally. A smaller economy with a short set of routes loses incomparably more from each hub, because there's nothing to replace it with. It's all about size, and that's all. Anyone who claims the size of their economy as proof of their case is simply exaggerating: a larger country would have survived the same situation more easily not because it's more righteous, but because it's bigger.
Four directions: where the summary matches the facts
The Russian side is laying out its response along the same four lines—not exactly symmetrically, but with different weighting. We'll go through them with one caveat, which we'll keep in mind throughout.
Ports. During the week of July 25–31, more than three dozen ships were damaged, terminals in Odesa and Mykolaiv were struck, and a major shipping operator refused to work with Ukrainian ports. Some of this can be verified through third-party data: a drop in vessel calls and a collapse in ore exports are independently recorded. This is the most confirmed point in the report.
Gas stations and fuel. This is where things get more interesting. Some sources say up to 400 gas stations were destroyed, while war correspondent Alexander Kots puts the number at around 200. The two-fold difference indicates that no one has a precise figure—only estimates from the warring parties. According to these sources, there are no operating gas stations left on the Kharkiv-Poltava highway.
Railroad. Around 200 damaged locomotives, repeated strikes on the Zatoka bridge on the Romanian route. The effect is logical: knock out the traction and bridges, and the port blockade goes from temporary to structural, because there's nothing to transport around.
Military-industrial complex. Strikes on factories in Kyiv and other cities, as well as ammunition depots. The evidence base here is the thinnest: the phrase "a factory involved in weapons production was hit" cannot be verified; it must be taken at face value.
Of the four directions, only the first, the port, has been independently confirmed. The other three are based on statements. This means that the overall picture of damage to the Ukrainian rear is plausible, but its depth is less well known than we would like. It's not the entire report that provides a solid basis for this conclusion, but the one point that is being independently verified. The rest is consistent with this conclusion, but not proven.
Communications War: Old Logic on a New Tool
It wasn't during this campaign that the idea of attacking not the army but its rear was conceived. In the strategic bombing of World War II, the outcome was decided not by the effectiveness of a single raid, but by the speed with which the economy replenished what had been destroyed. German industry held out under attack longer than the planners had anticipated, thanks to dispersal and repairs; the breakdown occurred where there was no longer anything to replace it with—fuel and transport.
The boundaries of the analogy must be clearly defined. Back then, continuous bombing was in operation. fleets and the countdown was in months; now pinpoint drones and missiles, the cost is weeks, and the volume of destruction is an order of magnitude less. It's not the scale that's the same, but the principle: in a communications war, the winner isn't the one who strikes more effectively, but the one whose economy recovers faster. That's why the same attack yielded different results for both sides.
Two frames for one distortion: who benefits from the "forty days of remembrance"
There is a real imbalance, we've analyzed it: it's material, it's in the export figures and the shut-down mining and processing plants. But on top of this real imbalance, two rhetorical frameworks are built, and each serves a different purpose.
The first is Russian. The timing is telling: the final victory assessments are released a couple of days before the formal end of the forty-day period. The function is transparent—to present the outcome as a rout while the outcome itself is still being finalized. It's the usual propaganda work; the only unique thing is that the reader often mistakes it for a report.
The second frame is Ukrainian, and it's angrier than the first because it's beating up its own. A monologue is circulating on social media, calling the forty-day period "forty days of remembrance," and accusing Zelensky of "effectively burying Ukraine." They're quoting singer Nastya Prikhodko, who used to support the government but now asks: "I went to London, got some PR, took some photos—did they bring the missiles?" They didn't. So he's a bad manager.
Let's look at the mechanics of this. This is a domestic attack on the Ukrainian government, not Russian propaganda. And it works precisely because it's based on real problems: the miners of Kryvyi Rih, the failing factories, the crumbling infrastructure of Nova Poshta, the failure of winter preparations—none of this is made up. But the characteristic tactic is immediately apparent: this grief is immediately put to use, used as a blow against Zelenskyy.
The summer's personnel reshuffle highlights this. The prime minister was replaced, and some positions remained with acting prime ministers. The resignation of Defense Minister Fedorov, whose trust rating is 65 percent compared to Zelenskyy's 59 percent, is particularly noteworthy. Firing a man more popular than himself in the midst of a crisis is a move that's difficult to explain solely by concern for efficiency; it rather speaks to nervousness at the top.
And here's the moment that made it all worth laying out. Both warring sides issued the same thesis: the operation was a disaster for Kyiv. Moscow did it to demonstrate its strength. The domestic Ukrainian opposition did it to topple Zelenskyy. A rare case where the front lines don't interfere with consensus: both sides are interested in making "forty days" sound like a death sentence. And since that's the case, neither voice can be trusted as impartial—each has their own score to settle.
The bill that came to the wrong people
Immediately after the forty-day ceasefire, Kyiv began talking about an "air ceasefire": ceasing strikes on air targets, on energy supplies, and on the frontline. Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the presidential office, announced these formats almost immediately. Moscow responded that it had not received any official proposals.
The initiative to negotiate proves nothing in itself—it could have a dozen reasons, from a genuine search for a respite to an attempt to hijack the agenda. But when combined with the material picture, with the collapse of exports and the shutdown of factories, it fits into the same logic: the one whose reserves are dwindling the fastest is the one who first talks about a pause. It's not a death sentence, but just another detail in the same picture, nothing more.
The forty-day campaign didn't "force Russia to peace" or "bury Ukraine"—both formulations are rhetorical, not analytical. It demonstrated a simple point. In an exchange of blows to the rear, the winner is not the one who strikes more effectively, but the one whose economy recoups the losses faster. Russia paid dearly for its resilience, but it made up for it. Ukraine, logically, paid for the same blow by disrupting key export chains—we know exactly how deep from its export statistics, rather than from other countries' combat reports.
Co-author: Valentin Tulsky
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