Ukraine's Strategic Interdiction Campaign Begins to Take Shape

Weapons, targets, and Russia's (non-)response

Picture: Screenshot from a social media video showing the destruction caused by Ukrainian missile and drone strikes

This week witnessed some of the most intense Ukrainian drone and missile operations to date. Ukraine conducted several larger-scale attacks against critical infrastructure and military targets deep inside Russian territory, as far as 1,100 km behind the frontlines.

The largest attack occurred during the night of 13 to 14 January, with well over 100 drones and missiles targeting Russian industrial sites, oil depots, refineries, and ammunition storage facilities across several regions, including Voronezh, Saratov, Tatarstan, and Orel. Additional smaller-scale attacks were carried out in the days before and after. Just last night, Ukraine appears to have struck more oil depots in the Kaluga and Tula regions.

It is still unclear which weapon systems Ukraine employed in these operations. Following the large-scale attack of 13 to 14 January, Russian media alleged that U.S.-supplied MGM-140 ATACMS short-range ballistic missiles and British/French-supplied Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles were involved, including in the strike on a chemical plant in Bryansk.

Ukraine has not confirmed the use of Western-supplied missile technology in the attacks, and Russia has yet to provide evidence, such as images of wreckage from Western missiles. However, if confirmed, it would mark the crossing of a significant threshold, as it would be the first documented instance of Western missiles being used not only against military targets but also against industrial facilities with dual-use potential.

Ukraine’s strategic interdiction campaign

The strikes witnessed this past week are significant, particularly as they demonstrate the potential impact of a coordinated “strategic interdiction campaign” by Ukraine, leveraging long-range drone and missile technology against an underprepared adversary. I advocated for this approach in my very first Substack post, recommending it as a strategy Ukraine should pursue and Western states should enable.

Strategic interdiction focuses on targeting an adversary state’s war-industrial infrastructure, key domestic defense industries, supply chains, strategic transportation nodes, and related assets. Its primary objective is to disrupt the adversary’s military capabilities during deployment and pre-deployment stages, thereby reducing the aggregate war materials available to their forces.

The core logic behind such a campaign is simple: every piece of equipment and war-relevant material that never reaches the frontline is something that does not need to be destroyed there, saving critical manpower and equipment on the Ukrainian side.

(For those interested in exploring this concept further, including how China might conduct a strategic interdiction campaign against Taiwan, I go into it in more detail in my latest journal article in the Journal of Strategic Studies, which can be downloaded freely.)

Strategic interdiction campaigns do not need to be decisive to be effective. In fact, historically, they have never been. For example, the most successful aspect of the Allies’ strategic air campaign during World War II arguably involved strategic interdiction strikes against Nazi-Germany’s war-related industries. While these strikes did not immediately collapse Germany’s war economy—aggregate output actually grew until mid-1944 despite intensifying bombing efforts—they played a crucial role in defeating Germany by reducing output far below what was theoretically possible.

This is important: The key to evaluating the success of a strategic interdiction campaign lies not in absolute terms (e.g., “Did it decisively defeat the enemy?”) but in relative terms. The relevant question is: compared to the adversary’s maximum potential production, by what percentage has aggregate output been reduced? In this regard, strategic interdiction campaigns, especially those involving cost-effective long-range strike weapons, can yield very positive results (of course that also counts for other actors, including Russia, NATO, and China, among others).

Take the example of the Bryansk chemical production plant that was successfully struck, resulting in significant damage. We do not yet know how long the plant will be out of operation. It could resume partial production within days or weeks, or it might remain non-operational for an extended period. While the latter outcome would be ideal, even a temporary halt in the production of explosives and propellents is valuable. Ultimately, every piece of equipment that is never produced is one less item that needs to be dealt with at the frontline.

To be clear, Ukraine has been pursuing a strategic interdiction campaign for approximately two years now, already achieving important results, such as reducing Russia’s oil refining capacity by an estimated 17 percent by July 2024. However, until now, Ukraine has lacked the ammunition necessary to conduct this type of strategic campaign at a larger scale. Given Ukraine’s drastic ramp-up in domestic missile and drone production and its ambitious goals, the attacks witnessed this week are an encouraging sign that Ukraine’s strategic interdiction campaign may spell more and more trouble for Russia in the months ahead.

Russia’s (non-)response

Another interesting takeaway from this week’s drone and missile strikes is Russia’s response, which has been surprisingly underwhelming—albeit relatively speaking. Russia did promptly launch its own missile attacks, which tragically resulted in the loss of civilian lives in Ukraine.

However, as with most so-called Russian “retaliatory” missile strikes, it remains unclear whether these strikes were genuinely reactive or simply part of preplanned operations that might have occurred regardless, if not on that specific day, then a few days later. It’s worth noting that Russia still has hundreds of missiles stockpiled, which it very likely intends to use irrespective of Ukraine’s actions.

What stands out most is the relative silence from Russian leadership. While there was some commentary in response to the unconfirmed use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles in the strike on Bryansk, the overall chatter was minimal. Most notably, the nuclear rhetoric we’ve come to expect following such events was conspicuously absent.

In my view, this is because Russia currently lacks an important part of its usual audience: the American leadership. With Biden leaving the White House and the incoming Trump Administration preoccupied with matters other than Ukraine (such as invading Canada and Greenland), there is little attention across the Atlantic on either Ukraine’s actions or Russia’s responses.

Many of Russia’s nuclear threats—though not all—are akin to toddler tantrums. Often, they are best ignored. There is academic support for this approach. By reacting to every nuclear threat with undue attention, we risk creating what the literature calls “commitment traps,” where Russia might feel compelled to act on its threats to maintain credibility in future scenarios.

The best way to avoid this dynamic is to prevent these commitment traps from arising in the first place. It seems that, more unconsciously than on purpose, we’ve been doing exactly that in recent days. This is a lesson worth building upon, and we need more of it moving forward.