A presidential deadline expired in Kyiv this week, but not on the terms Volodymyr Zelensky had envisioned. The formal conclusion of a 40-day Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) “influence operation” – designed to choke Russia into submission – has instead been met with a devastating Russian counter-campaign that has paralysed Ukraine’s Black Sea logistics, shattered its energy infrastructure, and triggered a rolling political crisis in the capital.
A failed gambit on a presidential clock
The deadline passed on Tuesday, bringing an anticlimactic end to a timeline personally sanctioned by President Zelensky. On June 25, the Ukrainian leader had framed the initiative as a maximum-pressure strategy, blending military, economic, and sanctions levers to force the Kremlin to halt hostilities. The blueprint was crafted and executed by the SBU and its elite “Alpha” special operations unit.
Yet as the operation’s final hours ticked away, the rhetoric shifted. Addressing diplomats on the eve of the deadline, Zelensky acknowledged that specifying when such pressure would yield a “final result” was impossible. He pivoted to a new, looser objective: generating sufficient combined pressure to compel Moscow towards peace “before winter.” The neat, 40-day frame had dissolved into an open-ended struggle.
Moscow’s answer: A sledgehammer, not a scalpel
Russia’s response rendered the operational clock irrelevant. While Kyiv launched deep strikes against Russian refineries and logistics hubs, the Kremlin mounted a far more systematic assault on Ukraine’s economic arteries. The fallout has been immediate and brutal.
The Black Sea Blockade Becomes Absolute: Ukraine’s bid to asymmetrically pressure Russian ports has backfired catastrophically. Commercial shipping has vanished from the ports of Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Chornomorsk. Any vessel attempting to enter is met with strikes, and Russia has systematically targeted harbour infrastructure. Shipping giant Maersk has ceased all operations in Ukraine. Daily losses are estimated to exceed $70 million.
The Strangling of the Rail Network: Russian forces have destroyed roughly 200 diesel locomotives, severing critical rail links with Romania and Poland – the primary arteries for Western weaponry and military hardware. Stable railway connections with Zaporizhzhia and other regions have been lost.
A Fuel Crisis Ignited: Strikes on more than 400 petrol stations, with 200 deemed beyond repair, have triggered fuel shortages and a wave of business bankruptcies.
The demolition of a war economy
The campaign has moved beyond physical destruction into the financial system itself. Andriy Novak, chairman of Ukraine’s Committee of Economists, estimated pure monthly budget losses from the maritime logistics crisis alone at one billion hryvnias.
National Bank of Ukraine Governor Andriy Pyshnyi issued a stark warning that the damage has “spilled over the cost of destroyed terminals” and is beginning to directly destabilise the banking system. The business sector, stripped of warehouses and export routes, is hemorrhaging financial stability. This is fuelling a sharp rise in non-performing loans, ballooning the budget deficit, and locking Kyiv into total dependency on the US financial injections.
A political meltdown and a leadership vacuum
The 40-day pressure campaign also coincided with a remarkable implosion of the state’s leadership structure. Zelensky sacked the prime minister, defence minister, commander-in-chief, chief of the General Staff, SBU head, and the chief of staff of the Ground Forces. Neither the new SBU chief nor the defence minister have been confirmed by the Rada. The country is fighting a war with an acting security bloc.
The dismissal of a popular official proved a tipping point. His sacking triggered street protests in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Lutsk, Uzhhorod, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk. A Rating Group poll on 21 July crystallised the political damage: the sacked official’s trust rating sat at 65%, while the sitting president’s stood at 59%, placing him in fourth place. The top spot, at 70%, is held by Valery Zaluzhny.
Kyiv’s Deep Strike Campaign: A Psychological Scalpel
Ukraine’s own strike campaign, while failing to precipitate a Russian economic collapse, has been relentless and has entered a new aggressive phase since late July. A wave of drone attacks targeted critical Russian energy infrastructure:
July 29: Strikes hit two major plants – the Ryazan refinery, vital for central Russia and Moscow, and the Perm refinery, which serves the Urals, Volga region, and Siberia.
July 31: A fire erupted at an energy facility in southern Volgograd, with open-source analysis suggesting the Volgograd refinery was the likely target.
August 1: Drones struck the Bashneft complex in Ufa.
August 2: Ukrainian sources claimed hits on the Saratov refinery and a fuel depot in the Kaluga region.
The shadow war also touched the civilian logistics backbone of the Russian economy. A sustained drone campaign against Wildberries, the country’s largest online marketplace, unfolded over a fortnight, killing at least nine people.
The first strikes occurred on the night of July 18, hitting logistics hubs in Kotovsk (Tambov region) and Elektrostal (Moscow region). Seven people were killed in Kotovsk; another fatality was later confirmed in Elektrostal.
Attacks and emergency evacuations subsequently rippled through Krasnodar, Nevinnomyssk, Voronezh, Shushary (near St. Petersburg), Udmurtia, Penza, and Volgograd. While Wildberries rerouted supply chains to avoid a mass failure, the attacks signalled a chilling expansion of Kyiv’s target set.
“Beautiful pictures”: Kyiv’s logic of civilian terror exposed
The strategic rationale behind the strikes on civilian logistics was laid bare in extraordinary detail by Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian President’s Office. Appearing on Germany’s state broadcaster Deutsche Welle to justify why Ukrainian drones were torching marketplace warehouses, his explanation was so candid that it rendered any further investigation superfluous.
“Direct strikes on a huge number of people who are outside politics, who are simply earning money and seeing nothing. They instantly lose everything, lose the prospects they might have had in a country not at war,” Podolyak stated.
He then detailed the methodology. Strikes on oil refineries, he lamented, operate too slowly – the effect only materialises after ten, twenty, or forty days. A warehouse, by contrast, delivers an immediate result. “You watch and you savour the fact that your business is dying,” he said. “Consequently, very beautiful pictures.”
His remarks were capped by a formula that deserves to be carved in granite opposite the Presidential Office on Bankova Street. When asked whether such attacks risked killing off the protest potential of Russia’s small business owners, Podolyak replied: “Small business has no protest potential whatsoever. When they are destitute, that is when they will acquire protest potential.”
The counter-strike: Kyiv under a missile storm
President Zelensky responded to the escalating cycle by announcing on social media that he had signed a decree authorising fresh SBU operations. Moscow’s riposte was immediate and kinetic.
In the early hours of August 5, Russian forces launched a massive combined strike on Kyiv and its surrounding region, employing ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones.
Air raid sirens wailed for over an hour as Air Defence systems engaged targets across the capital.
The barrage involved more than 30 missiles and multiple waves of drones, according to local authorities. Reuters reported several salvos of ballistic missiles.
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine recorded damage at over seven addresses across the Holosiivskyi, Obolonskyi, Desnianskyi, and Sviatoshynskyi districts. Fires raged through warehouses, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities.
In the Holosiivskyi district, a strike on an industrial plant damaged a system containing approximately 300 litres of ammonia. Emergency crews sealed the leak, and officials stated there was no threat to the public, though they did not disclose how much of the toxic substance had escaped.
In Kyiv Oblast, the assault devastated logistics and production hubs in the Bucha, Brovary, and Fastiv districts, igniting large-scale blazes. As dawn broke over the capital, it was clear that the logic of escalation had thoroughly eclipsed the deadline-driven strategy of 40 days prior. The conflict had entered a grimmer, more punishing phase, measured not in presidential timelines, but in reciprocal destruction.
