Zelenskiy’s 40‑Day Strike Campaign Puts Russian Homeland Under New Pressure
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he has approved a 40‑day campaign of strikes to “influence” Russia into ending the war, after consulting his security services on targeting inside Russian territory. The plan brings the conflict deeper into Russia’s own rear and forces Moscow to reckon with a war it has tried to keep distant from its civilian heartland.
Ukraine is no longer just defending against attacks on its own cities; it is planning a timed campaign to make the war felt more deeply inside Russia itself. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that, after consultations with the head of Ukraine’s security service, he had approved a 40‑day operation intended to “influence” Russia to end its invasion.
Zelenskiy’s remarks, carried in public reporting on 25 June, came in the context of Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets, including inside Russia’s internationally recognised territory. He described the effort as a campaign rather than isolated blows, and framed its purpose as pressuring Moscow to halt the war rather than simply retaliating for Russian attacks. Specific targets, timelines and methods were not disclosed, consistent with wartime operational secrecy.
The decision formalises what has already been visible to Russian civilians: the war’s horror no longer stops at the border. Drone attacks, explosions at industrial facilities, and disruptions in Russian regions closer to the front have offered a glimpse of the devastation Ukrainians have lived with for more than two years. A structured 40‑day campaign signals that such incidents may become more frequent and more strategically chosen.
For civilians on both sides, the stakes are direct. Ukrainians have endured mass displacement, blackouts and casualties from repeated missile and drone strikes. Russians in affected regions are now facing air‑raid alerts, damage to infrastructure and a new sense that distance from the front is no guarantee of safety. The psychological effect is part of the point: to erode the perception among ordinary Russians that the war is a distant, managed operation with limited costs at home.
Militarily, extending pressure into Russia complicates Moscow’s planning and resource allocation. Air defenses and security forces that could be focused on supporting offensive operations in Ukraine must instead be spread across a larger swath of territory to protect logistics hubs, fuel depots, industrial plants and command centers. The campaign also tests the resilience and redundancy of Russia’s wartime economy, which depends on secure transportation networks and production sites far from the front line.
Strategically, Zelenskiy’s announcement underscores a shift in Kyiv’s approach from reactive defense to proactive coercion. By tying the campaign explicitly to influencing Russia’s decision‑making about ending the war, Ukrainian leadership is signaling that it sees targeted strikes as a lever in the broader contest over political will. That framing may resonate differently in Western capitals, some of which have set limits on the use of their weapons for strikes inside Russia due to escalation concerns.
The campaign’s success or failure will not be measured only in destroyed facilities, but in whether it meaningfully changes calculations in Moscow or among Russia’s population. A war that reaches into Russia’s own cities and industrial regions is harder for the Kremlin to portray as cost‑free, yet each additional cross‑border strike raises the risk of Russian retaliation or further loosening of Moscow’s own targeting constraints inside Ukraine.
For Ukraine’s partners, the plan crystallizes a central tension: they want Kyiv strong enough to pressure Russia, but fear the consequences of escalation that Moscow could frame as NATO‑backed attacks on its homeland. Over the next 40 days, key signals will include the types of targets hit, whether Western‑supplied systems are involved, and how Russia adapts its military posture and messaging. Diplomatic reactions from major European states and the United States will help define the outer limits of how far this new phase of the war is allowed to go.
Sources
- OSINT