Ukraine’s 40-Day SBU Operation Aims to Pressure Russia as Deep-Strikes Expand to Crimea and Krasnodar
President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has approved a 40-day Security Service operation to “influence the aggressor state,” as Ukrainian long-range drones and special units intensify strikes on Russian oil, gas and energy sites in Crimea and Krasnodar. The push is designed to tighten the screws on Russia’s logistics and occupation command while testing the limits of Western tolerance for attacks beyond the front.
Ukraine is putting a timeline on its next phase of pressure against Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has authorized a 40-day special operation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) aimed explicitly at influencing Russia to end the war, as Ukrainian forces expand a campaign of deep strikes on energy, logistics and command targets from occupied Crimea to Russia’s southern regions.
Speaking in a national address, Zelensky described the operation as a sustained effort to “influence the aggressor state” and praised the SBU’s Alpha center for months of work in defending front-line positions and striking Russian personnel and equipment with drones. Although he shared few operational details, his comments came alongside fresh reports of long-range Ukrainian drone attacks on critical nodes that underpin Russia’s war effort.
In Crimea, a recent large-scale Ukrainian drone strike reportedly targeted multiple high-value assets: naval and surface radars, including an MR-231 system in Myrnyi and two Neva-B radars near Morske and Zaozerne; and the Tavriiska Thermal Power Plant in Simferopol, which was said to have been hit four times. Additional strikes were reported against gas and oil infrastructure and air-defense sites, signaling a campaign designed not just to damage individual facilities but to degrade Russia’s ability to see, power and supply its occupation forces on the peninsula.
Across the Kerch Strait and into Russia proper, Ukrainian Sichen long-range drones again hit the Poltavskaya Oil Depot in Krasnodar Krai, causing large fires, according to visual evidence from the scene. It was reportedly the second strike on the facility in a month. Separate footage showed a Ukrainian drone hitting an oil processing unit at the Ufa Oil Refinery further east, with a Russian air-defense missile visible but failing to prevent the impact. Each of these attacks chips away at the infrastructure Russia relies on to fuel its military and maintain a semblance of normalcy in rear areas.
Zelensky also said Ukrainian foreign intelligence had obtained materials documenting a “daily deepening fuel, military logistics and command crisis” in occupied Crimea, and claimed that Russian occupation authorities privately acknowledge they cannot solve the problems created by sustained Ukrainian medium- and long-range strikes and sanctions-like measures. He argued that similar pressure is beginning to spread across Russian regions, a narrative that dovetails with growing reports of fuel shortages inside Russia linked to repeated hits on refineries and depots.
For Russian commanders, this presents a two-front logistics problem: protecting and resupplying forces at the edge of the front while dealing with fires and outages hundreds of kilometers behind the lines. Every radar knocked out in Crimea complicates air-defense coverage over key bases and the Black Sea; every fuel depot hit in Krasnodar or refinery damaged near Ufa requires rerouting trains, tankers and security assets. For Ukrainian planners, the goal is clear — make the cost of occupation and continued offensive operations steadily rise, even if no single strike is decisive on its own.
Ordinary civilians are caught in the middle. In Crimea, rolling power disruptions and fuel rationing are becoming harder to separate from the broader narrative of a peninsula under strain, while in Russian regions affected by refinery and depot strikes, motorists and businesses now confront shortages and uncertainty that state media struggle to explain away. These are the daily frictions that Kyiv hopes will, over time, translate into political pressure on Moscow’s leadership.
One line sums up the strategy: if Russia insists on making every Ukrainian city fair game for its drones and missiles, Ukraine is trying to make every Russian fuel line and radar installation part of the battlefield in return.
The next markers to watch are whether Kyiv publicly details milestones or apparent successes in this 40-day operation, whether additional high-value targets in Crimea and Russia’s interior are struck, and how Moscow responds — with intensified attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, new air-defense deployments, or attempts at cyber and covert action against Ukrainian decision-makers. Western reactions will matter too, especially if attacks deeper inside Russia raise fresh questions about escalation and the use of donated long-range systems.
Sources
- OSINT