Weekend Update #186: A Primer On The Difference Between Long and Medium/Mid Range Strike

Examples Of Both; also, The Trump Administration Pivots, The Reason Why Is The Important Thing

Hi All,

I know many of you are following the US-Iran War closely and are hearing the news about Trump possibly throwing in the towel and accepting defeat. Certainly looks like that. However, this update will stay on the Russo-Ukraine War. If Trump is indeed folding, it will not be a big shock to readers here.

This was a week when Ukraine continued to step up its game in both long- and medium/mid-range strike, and talked publicly about both. Btw, for the sake of ease, from now on I will just say medium-range strike. I know that these concepts will be old news for long-time readers of this Substack, however there have been lots of new readers in the last few months and I thought it would be useful to provide a primer on the difference between them. Its not just about distance, its actually more about concepts, and understanding what matters in the use of air power.

I will then follow up with examples of each, as this week Ukraine demonstrated its growing ability in both domains. If they continue to expand their capacity at the present trajectory and Russia cannot come up with a counter, the Russian military is in real trouble.

A Burning Russian Truck Trying To Bring Supplies Along The M-14 highway into Mariupol.

Also, this week was interesting for the Trump administration, which is clearly trying to row back on its earlier support for Putin and its hostility towards Ukraine. How they did it is ultimately less important than why, but both will be discussed.

Finally, my latest piece just appeared in The Atlantic. Here is a gift link. It builds on this Substack published last week, so it might not be terribly new for many of you, but at least the right narrative is getting out.

Has Putin Met His Marianas Moment?

I hope you enjoy it.

A Primer On The Difference Between Long and Medium/Mid Range Strike

That sound you hear might be an burning Russian oil refinery near the Ural Mountains or it might be an exploding logistics convoy travelling along the M14 Highway (the Ukrainian highway from the Russian border to Mariupol and on to Odesa, much of which is under Russian occupation). These examples of both successful Ukrainian long and medium range strike, are something which the Ukrainians are trying to communicate to the rest of the world. Zelensky even mentioned both in this recent tweet.

Long-time readers of this Substack will probably not be surprised by these different concepts, but there are many newer readers who might find some background on them useful. To begin with, if you want to read why these changes are so important, and why people who believed Russia had the upper hand in the ranged war were so wrong, here is a piece from October 2025 which tried to educate people on what to watch out for at that point in the war.

The Ranged War Is Still In An Early Stage

The Difference Between Long-Range and Medium/Mid-Range Strike:

To preface this discussion I will admit that there is no one definition for long-range and medium-range strike that is universally accepted. For this war it is best to think of the difference between them in conceptual terms more than just a range differential, with a proviso that technology and capability also play a major role.

Long-range strike could best be compared to strategic bombing in World War II. It is an attempt to strike deep into Russia to try and damage the strategic industries that underpin the Russian war machine. This involves most famously the campaign against Russian oil refineries, but do not overlook strikes on Russian military production such as drones, both in the component producing and final assembly phase. The strikes around St Petersburg and Moscow and now increasingly into the Urals are all part of this long-range strike campaign, but it also includes strikes in Southern Russia such as around the Caspian. So think of long-range strike as trying to limit/damage the ability of the Russians to generate new military force.

Ukrainian medium-range strike is conceptually different though in certain cases there have been medium-range strikes that have been on targets almost as far away as those being done for long-range strike. Medium-range strikes can occur in quite a large area, as close as 25-30 kilometres from the front line and stretching for say 300 kilometres further. What holds these strikes together is their purpose as much as their distance. These strikes are aimed primarily at logistic disruption, stopping the deployment of produced Russian force to the front to fight Ukraine. These are aimed at road, rail, sea/bridge traffic which is bringing supplies or reinforcements to the front.

If you want a one sentence summary it would be this:

“Long-range strike is aimed at limiting/destroying the ability of Russia to generate new military force and medium-range strike is aimed at disrupting/destroying the ability of Russia to deploy already generated force into the fight.”

Beyond the conceptual difference, one of the reasons the Ukrainians differentiate between the two is that their systems up to 300 kilometres or so are becoming more numerous and effective a little faster than their long-range systems. That is not to say that their long-range systems are not getting better, they are. Its just that in 2025 the Ukrainians understood that they were on the cusp of great improvements in the medium-range area, and started to think conceptually more about it.

Now, a really powerful air campaign needs to conceptually address both of these issues, which is what the Ukrainians are doing. This week had great examples that will illustrate the difference further.

Medium-Range Strike—The M-14 Highway

When it comes to medium-range strike, the Ukrainians seem to have the ability to hit road traffic pretty regularly along the M14 highway, which is the main overland route that the Russians have been using through southern Ukraine. Here is is highlighted on google maps, you can follow it as it runs from thre Russian border, to Mariupol, to Melitopol and onto Nova Kakhovka. Also note that at Melitopol the road branches and it becomes a key road to get supplies into and out of Crimea.

The Ukrainians have been able to hit traffic so regularly along the M-14, that the Russian occupation government has had to issue an order forbidding all civilian traffic (except food and vital supplies) on the road. Only military supplies and things that sustain life will be allowed through.

The reason for this is that trucking is coming under sustained attack on the road, which is reportedly littered with destroyed vehicles.

A Road Littered With Destroyed Trucks

There has been some discussion of whether Ukraine has established “fire control” along the road. I am still reluctant to say that fully. If Ukraine had fire control I would expect to be able to say that they can control traffic whenever and wherever they want. It is not clear that the campaign has reached that stage of control yet. It is probably more accurate to say that the Ukrainians can exercise road denial at times. It cannot stop all traffic, but it can strongly affect it while destroying a good deal of it.

The future of this fight will determine what happens at the front. If Ukraine can actually control and permanently interdict all road traffic along the M-14, it will be a massive problem for Russian forces in western Ukraine (think Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts). If supply on this road is stopped and rail traffic as well, the Russian’s only way to get supplies in will be through Crimea itself. That traffic has already been reduced.

Note: As this is being written there are uncomfirmed reports of Russian supply problems in Zaporizhzhia—all I can say is watch this closely.

The Ukrainian plan through medium-range strike is to starve the Russian army in Ukraine of reinforcement and resupply. That can cripple a force that fights in the rather basic way the Russians do.

Note: one final thing to say which actually helps the Russians. They do not have to get so much supply through in the first place as they did in 2022-2024 for instance, because they are not fighting with as many vehicles As their forces are “lighter” infantry or light vehicle based, their supply needs are less extensive. I might have to right a piece on this, but it is one way in which drone warfare provides a second order advantage to the Russians.

Long-Range Strike: Refineries And More

These Ukrainian long-range strikes have been going on for a while and people usually associate them with attacks on Russian oil production, particularly refineries. The Ukrainians themselves have made it a key part of their public discussion, with graphics such as this released this week.

Here are Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries in just the past week and some of their reported effects.

Timeline of Strikes (May 17– May 23, 2026)

• May 17: The Moscow Oil Refinery suspended crude processing following the major drone attack last weekend.

• May 18 & 20: The Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez (NORSI) refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, was struck twice with the May 20 strike successfully targeted the all important crude distillation unit.

• May 21: The Rosneft-owned Syzran Oil Refinery in Samara Oblast, situated over 800 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, was hit. The strike resulted in a significant fire. The facility has an annual processing capacity of approximately 9 million tons.

• May 22: The Yaroslavl Oil Refinery (YANOS), one of Russia’s largest, was attacked. This facility is located roughly 700 kilometers from the border and is a primary fuel node for military logistics.

• May 23: Operations expanded to the Black Sea coast with strikes on the Sheskharis oil terminal—a major export hub operated by Transneft—and the adjacent Grushova oil depot in Novorossiysk. Ukrainian sources also reported a strike on a tanker vessel, the Chrysalis, in the Black Sea.

So many attacks in one week, so far apart distance wise, is the key development. Russian air defense is already struggling, if they are presented with attacks in such different areas every week, it is difficult to see them do anything but get worse. Ukraine has been going after refineries for a while, but they are picking up the pace and going further than ever before.

What these strikes are doing is trying to deprive the Putin regime of desperately needed money (and if possible deprive the Russian economy of oil). Russia is facing a financial black hole in the future as it has spent down its sovereign wealth fund. Had Trump not stepped in to help with his Iran war, these financial problems would be terrible now. As it is, the higher price of world oil is really helping Russia, though Ukraine is using long-range strike to limit the improvement. Here are some developments of note.

• Refining Capacity Reductions: Attacks between March and May 2026 disabled between 16% and 25% of Russia’s domestic oil refining capacity, representing a loss of approximately 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in processing throughput.

• Export Decline: Consequently, Russia’s refined oil product exports fell by 13.6% month-over-month in April 2026, reaching a historic low of 2.2 million bpd.

Note: These are just refinery attacks. This week Ukraine attacked a number of other strategic industries with long-range strike, including a large chemical making plant (think explosives) in Perm.

Add it together, the Ukrainians are getting better in both long- and medium-range strike, and that makes it the big story of the week.

The Trump Administration Pivots, The Reason Why Is The Important Thing

Over the past week, the Trump administration made a number of noticeable pivots when it came towards its policy and public stance towards Ukraine. Basically, they tried to start de-Putinizing themselves. Both JD Vance and Marco Rubio, Trump’s two most likely successors, were part of this pivot and what they said was in many ways less important than why they said it.

Vice President JD Vance on May 21, decided he needed to stress how helpful Trump had been for Ukaine. He claimed that “No US president has done more to save Ukraine than Trump.” Now, remember, Vance might be the most pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine member of the administration, and man who boasted that one of his “proudest achievements” was cutting all aid to Ukraine. He has previously been viscerally anti-Ukraine, talking down Ukrainian prospects and saying how the US has no interest in the war—and now he wants to convince people that Trump was actually pro-Ukraine?

Btw, what Vance was referring to was the Trump Administration’s first term decision to send anti-tank weaponry to Ukraine. It conveniently overlooks the entirety of the end of aid in the second term, all the help for Putin, etc.

Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, a day later, said something arguably more revealing, though on the surface it was rather bland. He basically said that US efforts to negotiate the end of the Russo-Ukraine War were coming to an end for now, and then added a series of strange points.

Amongst these was that the parties in the talks (the Russians and Ukrainians) were not doing what the administration wanted.

“So, we’re more than happy to do that if the opportunity presents itself to have constructive and productive talks. We’re also not interested in getting involved in an endless cycle of meetings that lead to nothing.”

However maybe more interesting, was that Rubio lied outright and said that the US had not been trying to bully the Ukrainians before into taking a bad deal.

“Despite leaks that are not true, despite stories out there about us forcing the Ukrainians to take this position or that position, which are not true. If we see an opportunity to pull together talks that are productive, not counterproductive, and that have the chance to be fruitful, we’re prepared to play that role.”

This is an outright lie by Rubio as I said. The claim is not based on “leaks” as he tries to say. Zelensky in November 2025 came out and in a televised address said that Ukraine was being pressured by the USA (the “major partner” to take a terrible deal. Here is Zelensky’s exact quote.

“Now is one of the most difficult moments of our history. Now, the pressure on Ukraine is one of the heaviest….Ukraine can face a very difficult choice – either losing dignity or risk losing a major partner.”

So both Vance and Rubio are being dishonest in their own way, which in and of itself is no shock. However the interesting thing is that they are being dishonest to try and convince the American public that the administration was and is more pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin than in reality it has been.

The reason why can only be because the intelligence that the administration is receiving is that Russia is struggling and Ukraine is doing much better than the administration both publicly and privately was saying. Remember this is the administration that not only said Ukraine had “no cards” it also built into its national security estimates that Russia had the upper hand in the war and was going to get a peace deal on its terms. The place to see this best is the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on March 25, 2025. The report argued that ending the war on Putin’s terms was also in US interest. Here is the start of the section on the war (page 18).

And now the administration is boasting about helping Ukraine? That does not happen by accident—it is because they are understanding that everything they said in 2025 was wrong. They would not do it otherwise. You know why? Because Trump himself remains wedded enough to Putin not to join the chorus. The administration does not want Ukraine to do well. Its fundamental outlook remains unchanged.

However it is being forced to try and pretend it is more pro-Ukraine than it has been, and that is important.

So take that as a good sign, just do not let these fraudsters get away with it.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.