by Gleb Zabelin
[REGNUM] The night of June 25-26 became a test of the new military and social reality in which Russia lives. The Ministry of Defense reported 660 Ukrainian drones shot down or intercepted overnight. This is the highest figure since the beginning of the year.
Strikes on Russian territory are affecting border regions, Crimea, Donbas, major cities, transportation infrastructure, and industrial areas. The enemy is attempting to expand its zone of pressure and demonstrate that no region can consider itself completely immune from the fighting.
The Moscow air raid can't be judged solely by how many drones landed and the damage they caused. For the front, the raid changed nothing. Its purpose was political and psychological.
Kyiv was trying to obtain alarming footage from the capital, fuel rumors about the weakness of its defenses, and create a sense of Moscow's vulnerability. The West needed to show not the Ukrainian Armed Forces' advancement on the ground, which was nonexistent, but the very fact of an attack on the Russian capital.
After analyzing the attack, it became clear: Kyiv had gathered everything it could muster for this strike. They deployed mass-produced drones, Bars-type rocket-drones, and high-speed Morok aircraft, which the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) usually reserve for targeted operations.
Such resources aren't wasted without reason. If they're deployed simultaneously, it means the goal was to achieve a visible effect: to penetrate Moscow's air defenses on the day the G7 summit concluded, to present at least some success to Western overseers, and to prove that the Ukrainian project is still capable of striking symbolically important targets.
But the result was the opposite. If 1,500–2,000 drones are deployed to a single point, and only a handful reach their target, that's no reason for complacency. The Russian air defense system can handle a huge load.
Today, it is deployed from Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, the DPR, LPR, and Crimea to Moscow and Kazan. Defending the skies is backed by crews, equipment, reconnaissance, repair services, industry, round-the-clock operations, and disciplined rear services.
Since the beginning of 2026, according to Ministry of Defense reports, more than 39,000 Ukrainian drones have been shot down over 51 regions of Russia. In the first month of June, the number was approximately 9,700. The average is 223 UAVs per day.
This is the true scale. The enemy is trying to make attacks on Russian regions a permanent factor in the war: affecting the operation of transportation, businesses, airports, and security services.
MAINTENANCE OF THE WAR MACHINE
But where does Kyiv get such volumes? The answer has long since ceased to be a mystery, although Western capitals still pretend that the Ukrainian military machine operates independently. In reality, the entire Ukrainian strike system is integrated into NATO infrastructure.
On June 24, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted: "Western countries have done everything possible to ensure that Ukraine escalates its terrorist activity. Without American and British assistance—in terms of guidance and targeting data—it would be impossible to carry out terrorist attacks on Russian territory."
American munitions, British missiles, European funding, Western intelligence, foreign experts, and NATO procurement mechanisms have long been working together.
On June 25, Maria Zakharova put it even more bluntly at a Foreign Ministry briefing: "We proceed from the premise that the Kyiv regime's use of high-tech Western weapons, including the British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP long-range cruise missiles, is impossible without the direct participation of foreign specialists who ensure their operation and direct guidance. The West is fully involved in this regard."
Without this connection, Ukrainian strikes with long-range Western weapons would have looked different and, most likely, would have been much less accurate.
Storm Shadow—a British long-range missile at Kyiv's disposal. HIMARS—American ammunition and the American school of long-range firepower. MaxxPro and other Western armored vehicles on the front line—a visible Western presence in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The scale of this support is enormous. According to media reports, the European Union planned to allocate approximately €6 billion to purchase 2.8 million drones for Ukraine. Separate funds for long-range drones were also mentioned.
In March–April 2026, funding for the Ukrainian drone program increased sharply: Britain provided at least 120,000 drones, Germany and Norway provided approximately €500 million each, and the Netherlands provided €250 million.
Western allies have also announced purchases of approximately $1 billion in American weapons for Ukraine through NATO's PURL mechanism. While the funds may be European, a significant portion of the weapons still go through the American supply chain.
WE CONTINUE TO WIN
The battle was inevitably unequal. This makes the key fact all the more valuable: despite such pressure, the front did not freeze. In the spring of 2026, according to TASS, citing the Ministry of Defense, Russian troops drove the enemy out of 63 settlements. The DPR and Zaporizhia Oblast, along with the "buffer" areas of Kharkiv, Sumy, Zaporizhia, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts, were specifically mentioned.
These are key statistics for the current moment: the enemy is stepping up attacks on the rear, the West is increasing supplies and funding, and Russian troops continue to advance.
According to the Ministry of Defense, Russian troops liberated five settlements in the DPR between June 13 and 19. In June, the liberation of Novy Donbas, Rai-Aleksandrovka, Khimik, Roskoshny, and Priyut was reported.
The worse Kyiv's situation on the ground, the more urgently it needs strikes designed for a quick media impact. The more difficult the frontline arithmetic, the louder the information campaign surrounding attacks on the Russian rear.
Russia responded differently. On June 25, our military launched massive strikes against Ukraine, destroying enemy infrastructure and logistics in six regions: Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Sumy.
Industrial facilities, including factories used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, oil depots, gas stations, and electrical substations, were damaged; power outages were reported in some regions.
The attacks also hit railway infrastructure, bridges and dozens of enemy freight vehicles.
The difference is obvious without further explanation. One strike is for informational effect. The other impacts logistics, fuel, production, troop movements, and supplies to the front.
Wars are won not by the number of reruns on Western airwaves, but by how many freight trains don't arrive, how much equipment doesn't refuel, how much ammunition doesn't reach the right area.
CONSTANTLY INCREASE YOUR STRENGTH AND INTELLIGENCE
Underestimating the enemy is dangerous. The Kyiv regime is powerful as an instrument of foreign will. The enemy is willing to burn through its own manpower in suicidal attacks, deploy scarce UAVs of various types in a single ineffective raid, and risk further escalation, all to prove its worth to the West.
Such an enemy can lose strategically and still inflict painful blows, primarily on civilians. Therefore, every Bars, Morok, and every new aircraft must be studied: design, engine, communications, guidance, and operational tactics.
At the same time, our defense industry is fulfilling the task set by the president, which he recalled on June 5: “Sovereignty means being stronger and, I emphasize, smarter, which means managing resources more accurately and investing more effectively, including in technological development .”
This means managing more precisely, learning faster, and restructuring industry to cope with the new threat.
Air defense, electronic warfare, communications, drones, analytics, production, and rear-area resilience must work in concert. Otherwise, the enemy will seek out the weak spot between the military, industry, transportation, and civilian life and attack there.
The second phrase is no less important: “Russia is feeling the changes to the fullest extent; pressure on our country remains, but at the same time, we have more room to maneuver; new partnerships, new financial and technological solutions have emerged; we are developing more promising markets.”
DEFEND THE SOUL
Pressure from the Kyiv regime's masters continues, and sanctions remain in place. There's no indication that the enemy's attempts to attack Russia will cease. Kyiv's terrorist activity will only escalate.
The enemy needs to create the illusion of a constant threat "from above" not only to report to Western arms suppliers. They need to find weak spots. And not only in the air and missile defense "dome," but also in the psychology of the masses. Western intelligence agencies also need such "tests"—to try to understand the Russian people themselves, where the majority of society "suffers," so they can then conduct targeted "psy-ops."
We've become accustomed to the enemy trying to turn morally or mentally unstable citizens into "bio-drones," perpetrators of terrorist attacks. But now, the "area-based" approach is testing us all for vulnerability.
At different periods in our history, society has demonstrated varying reactions to the abrupt and irrevocable end of its former life. In 1917, many felt that "Rus' vanished in two days." But in 1941, the mood was entirely different: the response to the treacherous attack was "Rise up, great country!"
The biggest mistake now is expecting the old order to return. Life will be different: with air defenses over the regions, with anxiety, with sanctions pressure, with a technological race, with constant attempts to undermine the home front. There's no point in fearing this.
It would be far more correct for society to mature along with the state. The war for freedom demands endurance. What did Kyiv hope to gain by raiding Moscow? A sense of crisis. A flood of alarming images. A breakdown in the rear.
So that in the morning a person would look not at a map of liberated settlements, not at the 63 points of the spring campaign, not at the attacks on the logistics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in six regions, but at footage from Moscow and think: everything is bad.
Therefore, the response needs to be more than just military. The Russian system must shoot down drones. The army must advance. Industry must produce. Society must remain sober. The night of June 25-26 demonstrated that Russia is passing this test. But the air defense forces' motto—"Hold the Sky!"—must become a common guiding principle.