US, French Intelligence Helps Ukraine Plan Deep Strikes on Russia

July 31 ------ Ukraine has shifted its long-range drone campaign against Russia’s energy industry from broad attacks on refineries to more targeted strikes on critical components that are hard to replace, according to Financial Times (FT).

Ukrainian military planners, drone operators, and energy specialists told the FT that Kyiv’s goal is no longer simply to start fires at refineries or destroy storage tanks, but to keep plants offline for longer and make each strike more costly for Moscow. “The strategy was meticulously targeted and coordinated,” one Ukrainian deep-strike unit member told the FT. Ukrainian officials said intelligence provided by the US and France had helped map Russian air-defense deployments and identify routes that allowed drones to evade them and reach targets deep inside Russia.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defense minister and chair of the Center for Defense Strategies, said US and French intelligence had improved target selection, helping Ukraine’s deep-strike drone teams “learn where to hit.” He said Ukrainian planners had built a detailed map of Russia’s energy grid, allowing them to identify critical nodes where disruption can shut down larger parts of the system, and target equipment that is hardest to replace.

French President Emmanuel Macron boasted in January that France became the main intelligence provider for Kyiv, replacing Washington, though he did not elaborate on the claim at the time.

Engineers brief drone units before strikes

Two deep-strike drone operators told the FT that target selection is guided by detailed technical analysis by officials, taking into account logistics, flight paths, and broader operational priorities. Before missions, drone units receive briefings from energy engineers and industry experts on which components are indispensable to refinery operations and would take longest to replace. The engineers tell drone units to strike “these pipelines here, or this chimney, hit here in this space, or this part of the equipment connection, or this box, and so on,” one drone operator said.

Russia and Ukraine inherited similar Soviet-designed energy systems, giving Ukrainian engineers a detailed understanding of many of the industrial processes, equipment layouts, and operational vulnerabilities inside Russian facilities. “Sadly, we learn from Russians,” Zagorodnyuk said. “They are doing exactly the same to us here,” he added, referring to Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Source: kyivpost.com