The Third Phase of The Long War: What Russia may do to succeed in its confrontation with Ukraine

Scenarios for the third phase: escalation, mobilisation and coercion

By the summer of 2026, it had become abundantly clear that the Kremlin was not winning the war of attrition against Ukraine. Russia’s advance towards the borders of the Donetsk region had largely stalled, while Ukraine was conducting increasingly effective attacks against Russian rear-area infrastructure, creating mounting disruption and crises across multiple sectors. As a result, the economic and social costs of the war for Russia have risen sharply. Moreover, Ukraine currently enjoys a structural advantage in drone warfare, owing to its reliable Starlink connectivity and the capabilities of the Hornet drone system (→ Re:Russia: The Trap of Advantage).

Despite this, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle continue to signal their determination to press on with the war and ultimately secure victory. However, this only appears to be possible and realistic if the conflict escalates and additional resources and means are deployed, enabling the Russian side to turn the tide in its favour. In practical terms, this would amount to a transition to a third phase of the military campaign in the protracted Russo-Ukrainian war, following the failed blitzkrieg and the subsequent war of attrition. At present, expert debate has largely converged around four escalation options available to Moscow:

1) nuclear escalation;

2) a hybrid conflict in Europe, designed to force European countries to limit their aid to Ukraine and enter into negotiations on terms more favourable to Moscow;

3) a renewed round of ‘partial’ mobilisation in Russia;

4) a ‘coercive campaign’ to force Kyiv into negotiations on Russia’s terms by stepping up attacks on Ukrainian logistics and energy infrastructure, which would lead to a humanitarian crisis and economic collapse this coming winter.

With regard to the first option, Volodymyr Zelensky has stated, citing his contacts in the West, that China is firmly opposed to such a move and has sternly warned the Kremlin against it. There is, however, no confirmation of these claims from Chinese sources. Beyond any diplomatic pressure Beijing may have exerted, the likelihood of nuclear escalation is also constrained by the fundamental shift in Ukraine's long-range strike capabilities. Unlike in 2022, Ukraine now possesses a limited inventory of long-range missiles alongside increasingly capable drones and would potentially be able to retaliate against both nuclear facilities and chemical plants deep inside Russian territory in response to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Under such circumstances, the risks of mass casualties and environmental catastrophe would become mutual.

A hybrid conflict in Europe remains a conceivable scenario, although its probability has diminished as NATO's eastern flank and European public opinion have become increasingly prepared for such contingencies (→ Re:Russia: A Quasi-Existential Threat). The element of surprise has effectively been lost, while the likelihood of a robust response from the European coalition has increased significantly. This shift has also been reinforced by the changing position of the United States. Unlike a year ago, Washington no longer has an interest in weakening European support for Ukraine.

By contrast, a renewed round of ‘partial’ mobilisation appears increasingly likely. The Ukrainian president suggests that such a decision has effectively already been taken in the Kremlin, citing intelligence reports, whilst numerous sources in Russia indicate that it is actively under discussion. As the publication ‘Verstkа’ has noted, the Kremlin has already prepared legislative amendments, including changes to the Law on Civil Defence and related departmental regulations, which may indicate plans to involve the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) in implementing mobilisation. Other amendments, adopted at the end of July, grant Rosgvardia access to civil registry data.

The growing likelihood of this scenario reflects the apparent belief within the Russian leadership that Ukraine's manpower shortages and the mounting social tensions surrounding mobilisation remain major vulnerabilities, both for the Ukrainian armed forces and for the country's political stability. The recent dispute within Ukraine's military leadership may only have reinforced Putin's conviction that a strategy centred on a dual crisis, combining pressure on the battlefield with political strain in Zelensky's domestic ‘rear’, remains viable, despite Moscow's previous failure to realise such expectations.

The implementation of a new ‘partial’ mobilisation may also be viewed by the Kremlin as a means of putting the country on a wartime footing. During the previous phase of the war, the government was able simultaneously to finance both the defence-industrial sector and the civilian economy, thereby sustaining economic activity and rising household incomes. Achieving the Kremlin's military and political objectives now, however, would require a greater transfer of resources from households and private businesses. Under a mobilisation scenario, both would be expected to tighten their belts and accept sacrifices in the name of the war effort.

According to military experts, given the current state of Ukrainian drone warfare, the purely military benefits of mobilisation would be limited. Additional offensive operations conducted under Russia's existing tactical doctrine would probably produce only modest territorial gains while leading to a disproportionate increase in Russian casualties (→ Whisler, Kofman: A Return to Mass). Ukraine's stock of FPV drones is steadily increasing, whilst their kill zone is widening. However, from Putin’s perspective, these losses could themselves become a political instrument by drawing Russian society more deeply into a war that many Russians have thus far perceived as a distant colonial campaign unrelated to their own lives. Casualties have largely been associated with contract soldiers voluntarily accepting paid risks. Heavy losses among mobilised personnel, by contrast, could foster greater pro-war and anti-Ukrainian mobilisation within Russian society, strengthening demands for retribution.

Although the mobilisation model is not inherent to Putin’s governance practices or the economic ‘backbone’ of the Putin elite, and was rejected in 2023, attempts to implement it at this stage cannot be ruled out. Such a shift could also be accompanied by another reshuffle within the elite, a redistribution of influence over state spending, and even high-profile anti-corruption campaigns. In particular, the marked weakening of the Rotenberg brothers’ faction in recent months, as noted by experts, may prove to be an early indication of such events.

However, a second round of ‘partial’ mobilisation would entail considerable risks and could fail not only because of social resistance, but also because continued disruption to Russia's military logistics could render additional manpower ineffective or even counterproductive. If Russia continues to lose ground in the drone war, the military impact of mobilisation is likely to remain severely constrained.

Russia’s ‘coercive campaign’ and its resources

The escalation options outlined above all carry significant risks. By contrast, the lowest-risk and most path-dependent scenario for Moscow is a ‘coercive campaign’ that is, in many respects, symmetrical to the strategy currently being pursued by Ukraine. In the language of coercive diplomacy, such campaigns replace large-scale ground offensives with sustained air strikes against an opponent's critical infrastructure in an effort to raise the costs of continuing the war to a level at which they exceed the political costs of accepting an unfavourable negotiated settlement (→ Encyclopedia of Diplomacy: Coercive diplomacy).

At the end of June, President Zelensky approved a 40-day ‘plan to coerce Russia into peace’, centred on expanding long-range strikes against Russian infrastructure. Although the ‘40-day plan’ is better understood as a political signal than as a fully developed military strategy, Ukraine's broader campaign against Russian infrastructure is indeed intended to increase the asymmetric costs of the war sufficiently to encourage Moscow to seek a mutually acceptable settlement. It is worth noting that the US campaign against Iran has likewise followed a broadly similar logic of coercion aimed at bringing the opposing side to negotiations. As drone warfare has made large-scale ground offensives increasingly costly and ineffective, competition in inflicting damage on critical infrastructure is emerging as an alternative means of achieving strategic objectives.

The Kremlin first identified the core element of its own ‘coercive campaign’ as early as last winter, when it launched a relatively effective offensive against Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Both the Ukrainian government and Kyiv's European partners agree that a renewed wave of attacks this winter could expose the country to a humanitarian crisis and now constitutes one of the most serious threats facing Ukraine (→ Re:Russia: Infrastructure Rather Than Territory). Recent developments also suggest that Russia intends to broaden its air campaign across several fronts, targeting not only Ukraine's Black Sea ports and export corridors but also fuel supply networks in regions adjacent to the frontline. Following recent Ukrainian strikes, commercial shipping to Ukraine's Black Sea ports has reportedly been suspended, while a member of the Kharkiv Regional Council has claimed that Russian troops have destroyed every petrol station along the highway between Kharkiv and Poltava.

Moscow has therefore substantially revised its earlier strategy of striking Ukrainian cities in an effort to exert direct psychological pressure on the civilian population. The current coercion campaign instead focuses on destroying infrastructure whose disruption generates systemic effects across the economy, social conditions and Ukraine's military capabilities. The effectiveness of this strategy, however, depends on Russia's ability to expand its strike capacity by increasing the scale of combined attacks involving drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, with ballistic missiles playing the central role in this operational concept.

As our calculations based on an analysis of data published by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine show, the number of ballistic missiles launched by Russia has increased gradually since the autumn of 2022. The monthly trend in launches is volatile and indicates that missile production is limited; which is why Moscow is stockpiling supplies in order to carry out large-scale missile strikes, followed by periods of lower intensity (analysis of missile debris supports this assessment that a significant proportion of missiles were manufactured shortly before launch; Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelensky, has also spoken of this). Consequently, the most meaningful measure of Russia's ballistic missile production is not monthly launch totals but average launch rates over longer periods of at least four to six months.

As shown in Figure 1, Russia launched roughly 15 ballistic missiles per month until November 2023. During 2024, however, the average increased to around 50 launches per month, a level that was broadly maintained throughout 2025. A further phase of expansion began in the autumn of 2025. Between October and February, when Russia conducted its large-scale campaign against Ukraine's energy infrastructure, the average rose to approximately 90 ballistic missile launches per month. After a temporary decline in March and April, when launches fell back to around 50 per month, activity returned to winter levels between May and July. Over the past nine months, the average has therefore stood at approximately 85 ballistic missile launches per month. Cruise missile launches also display pronounced volatility and cyclical fluctuations. Unlike ballistic missiles, however, they do not exhibit a sustained upward trend. Average monthly launches amounted to 98 in 2023, 130 in 2024, 106 in 2025 and 122 in 2026.

Figure 1. Monthly Russian cruise and ballistic missile launches against Ukraine and the six-month moving average, 2022–2026

According to missile programme expert Fabian Hoffmann’s estimates as of May 2026, Russia's combined annual production capacity for 9M723 Iskander and Kh-47M2 ballistic missiles had reached approximately 600 to 800 missiles, sufficient to sustain launch rates of around 50 to 70 missiles per month. Our own calculations suggest that the overall figure is somewhat higher once other missile types are taken into account. Although some experts believe that Moscow has reached the limits of its ability to expand ballistic missile production because of continuing constraints on access to high-technology components, our statistical analysis indicates that Moscow has periodically succeeded in increasing output by increments of roughly 35 additional missiles per month. This is broadly consistent with estimates by Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), according to which Russia will produce around 700 ballistic missiles in 2026, similar to the previous year, together with more than 480 missiles for the S-300 and S-400 systems, approximately double the previous year's output, and up to 60 Kinzhal missiles. It is also broadly in line with Volodymyr Zelensky’s claims that Russia is capable of producing around 120 ballistic missiles of various types each month, or approximately 1,400 to 1,500 annually. Taken together, these estimates suggest that the Russian defence industry has achieved another increase in ballistic missile production during 2026.

One important uncertainty concerns the impact of Ukrainian strikes over the past six months against key elements of Russia's missile production complex. These include attacks on the Votkinsk Plant in February 2026, the Kremniy EL electronics manufacturer in March, and the VNIIR-Progress research institute, the Voronezh Semiconductor Plant, the ‘Titan-Barricades’ Research and Production Centre and the Research Institute of Physical Measurements in June. Even under a conservative scenario based on HUR's and Zelensky's production estimates, however, Russia could continue launching missiles at its current rate of around 90 per month while still accumulating a reserve of up to 30 missiles each month. By the winter of 2026-27, this would allow Russia to launch at least 150 ballistic missiles per month, more than 50% above last winter's level.

An additional source of strike capability for the Russian army is likely to be the Shahed jet-powered drones (variants of the Iranian Shahed-238 UAV), which Russia produces under the names ‘Geran-3’ and ‘Geran-4’, using Chinese small turbojet engines. Carrying warheads weighing between 50 and 90 kilograms, these systems can reach speeds of approximately 500 kilometres per hour and are therefore, unlike older variants, immune to conventional anti-drone defences. Ukrainian military officials claim to intercept more than 90% of the earlier petrol-powered Shahed drones. The new variants could therefore significantly increase both the effectiveness of Russian strikes and the number of targets that can be attacked simultaneously. According to estimates by the Ukrainian military, around 30 of these jet-powered drones were employed during the large-scale attack on Kyiv on 30 June. Russia's anticipated winter air offensive therefore represents a critical threat to Ukraine even if it is not accompanied by additional escalation measures such as mobilisation or a hybrid campaign against the West.

Counter-coercion: Kyiv’s strengths and weaknesses

Ukraine’s capacity to defend against Russian combined attacks remains extremely limited. The interception rate for Russian ballistic missiles has declined steadily. On average, Ukrainian air defences intercepted around 30% of ballistic missiles in 2026, but between April and July the figure fell to just 24% (Figure 2). This deterioration reflects the growing shortage of PAC-3 interceptor missiles for Patriot air defence systems. Existing production capacity is insufficient to remedy this deficit. Shortages of ballistic missile interceptors are now being felt worldwide and have become particularly acute following the war in Iran.

Figure 2. Interception rate of Russian ballistic missiles by Ukrainian air defence forces, 2022–2026, % of total launches

At the NATO summit in Ankara, Donald Trump pledged to provide Ukraine with a licence to manufacture missiles for the Patriot system. However, even with production already underway, the lead time for a PAC-3 interceptor is 24 months, according to a report by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). In practice, the process is likely to take even longer. Germany, which was granted a licence to manufacture PAC-2 missiles in 2024, does not expect to begin production until the end of this year. Licensing Ukrainian production will take even longer, as all suppliers must be certified, according to Fabian Hoffmann.

As an alternative to the Patriot, Ukraine had been considering the Franco-Italian SAMP/T system, although it has so far demonstrated limited effectiveness against Russian ballistic missiles. The German Diehl Group has also announced the development of the long-range IRIS-T SLX air defence system, but its interceptor is not expected to enter service before 2029-30. Meanwhile, the Estonian start-up Frankenburg Technologies, which is developing low-cost interceptor missiles, has so far secured only its first round of funding. The most promising initiative at present appears to be the FREYJA project, which Ukraine is developing in cooperation with several European partners. On 3 June, the Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point released footage of a test flight of the FP-7.x interceptor for this system. FREYJA is an attempt to combine various existing components and technologies, which will be integrated via NATO’s Link 16 protocol. According to one of the project’s developers, the FP-7.x interceptor is expected to cost no more than $1 million, several times less than a PAC-3 interceptor. Ukraine is attempting to accelerate the programme and hopes to obtain the first operational prototypes this autumn, according to Reuters. However, as the experience of deploying the current Patriot systems shows, it may take much longer. Early versions of the American system initially performed poorly under combat conditions and required several rounds of refinement before reaching their current level of effectiveness.

No comprehensive solution to the problem of defending against Russian ballistic missiles is therefore likely to emerge before winter. Under these circumstances, Ukraine's principal means of countering Russian strikes may be the credible threat of reciprocal long-range attacks against Russian territory capable of inflicting comparable, or politically and socially unacceptable, costs.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been steadily increasing the pressure on Russia through missile and drone attacks throughout 2026, expanding their range of targets and identifying ever new ‘weak spots’ in Russian infrastructure and logistics. Strikes on Russian oil refineries led to a 22% reduction in the output of petroleum products in June compared with July 2025, according to data just published by Rosstat. The blockade of Crimea is creating the prospect of a humanitarian crisis on the peninsula this winter, while strikes against Wildberries warehouse facilities in July constituted another psychological shock for the Russian public. The number of successful Ukrainian strikes against targets inside Russia has increased month by month, while the range of targets has continued to broaden. According to our calculations, Ukraine carried out 45 strategically significant successful strikes during the first quarter of the year. Between April and June, the tempo doubled to an average of one successful strike per day. In July alone, the number of successful attacks against major targets exceeded 50, surpassing the total for the entire first quarter. Overall, of the 187 successful strikes recorded since the beginning of the year, almost half (88) occurred during June and July, indicating that the intensity of Ukraine's campaign accelerated at an exponential pace over the spring and summer.

Figure 3. Ukrainian Armed Forces strikes against targets in Russia, 2026

Between May and July, the Armed Forces of Ukraine carried out 31 strikes against Russian oil refineries, bringing the total for the year to 56. A further 48 strikes targeted other fuel infrastructure, 77 since the beginning of the year, while 18 strikes hit various industrial facilities, raising the annual total to 38. The campaign has also entered a qualitatively new phase with attacks on consumer infrastructure. Over the past two weeks alone, Ukraine has conducted 15 such strikes, including 10 against logistics hubs belonging to Wildberries, the dominant player in Russia's e-commerce market, with annual turnover exceeding 6 trillion roubles, or roughly 3% of Russia's GDP (according to data from Kommersant). Based on available evidence, more than 10% of the company's warehouse capacity appears to have been destroyed. Kommersant’s earlier estimate of 8% predated the most recent wave of strikes.

Pressure has also intensified against targets in the frontline regions of Krasnodar and Rostov regions, which are critical to Russia's military logistics. Between May and July, Ukraine conducted 32 strikes against fuel infrastructure in these two regions, accounting for just over 30% of all attacks on such facilities during that period. At the end of July, Ukraine also targeted petrol station networks in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. According to local authorities and regional media, more than 50 such strikes were recorded during July, as calculated by The Agency. Petrol stations in the Belgorod region were hit most frequently (at least 43 attacks), whilst in the border town of Shebekino, virtually all petrol stations were destroyed, writes the local publication Pepel.

Thus, symmetrical ‘coercive campaigns’ are likely to unfold simultaneously over the coming months. Thus far, the Russian authorities have managed either to mitigate their effects, at least temporarily, as in the case of the petrol supply crisis, or to suppress public attention, as in the case of the blockade of Crimea. However, if the pace of recent months continues, the cumulative impact could reach levels posing a serious threat to social stability by the autumn. Just as Ukraine currently lacks an effective defence against Russian ballistic missiles, Russia possesses few effective means of countering Ukraine's long-range strike campaign.

The effectiveness of Ukrainian strikes may increase in the near future, partly due to the expansion of their missile capabilities. Although Fire Point’s chief designer Denys Shtilerman claims that the first Ukrainian ballistic missiles could appear as early as this autumn, mass production of the FP-9 missile is unlikely to begin before 2027, as the company’s CEO, Iryna Terekh, previously stated. At the same time, according to Terekh herself, the company is already producing up to 100 Flamingo cruise missiles per month, which are being employed in Ukraine's combined long-range strike operations.

Nevertheless, ballistic and cruise missile production on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides is likely to remain limited. As a result, many analysts argue that the decisive factor, both on the frontline and across the wider theatre of war, including the near, operational and strategic rear, will be the development and rapid scaling of innovation in drone warfare. This applies equally to offensive strike systems and to technologies designed to counter unmanned aerial systems.