Ukraine Just Won the ONLY War That Matters… Russia Is DONE!

It was one of the few areas of the Ukraine war
where Russia could claim to hold the advantage.

A tactic born from sheer volume that allowed
Russia to wreck Ukrainian infrastructure and destroy Ukrainian soldiers.

But Ukraine has turned
everything around.

Now, Ukraine is outclassing Russia in something truly terrifying.

The only war that matters is being won, as Ukraine’s strike drones come out on top.

Russia
is done.

And Ukraine is just getting started.

For the first time since Putin launched his invasion,
Ukraine is deploying more strike drones across the front lines than Russia.

That’s according to
the Deputy Head of the Office of the President, Pavlo Palisa, who says that the gulf is massive,
and it’s going to grow larger.

“The ratio of strike drone usage (front-strike) between us
and the enemy is now different—1.

3 to 1 in our favor.

That is, we are using 30% more strike
drones than the enemy.

And this is producing results.

” Those results can’t be disputed.

As
Putin launches Russia’s spring offensive with a strategy that seems to amount to little more than
throwing more meat against Ukraine’s defenses, Russia’s casualty rate is rising.

In March,
Ukraine killed or injured 33,988 Russian soldiers through drone strikes alone.

In Donetsk, where
Russia is pushing its offensive in a desperate attempt to take the oblast that is right at the
top of Putin’s priority list, Ukraine’s drones are contributing heavily to Russia losing 316 soldiers
for every square kilometer that they take.

This is drone-based attrition.

And now that Ukraine has
pulled ahead of Russia on the strike drone front, it’s only going to get a lot more devastating
for Putin’s forces.

Fiber-optic drones, which are an area in which Russia has long held the
advantage, represent the most prominent example of the turnaround that we’re now seeing on the front.

These drones, which are hard-wired and thus mostly immune to jamming and other electronic warfare
techniques that plague other types of FPV drones, have been the bane of Ukraine’s defenses for
a long time.

Now, they’re the wired thorn in Russia’s side.

Palisa reveals that fiber-optic
systems now account for 32% of the daily drone strikes that Ukraine conducts across the entire
front.

For Russia, that number is lower, hitting 24%.

This tells us that Russia is struggling more
than ever before to coordinate its fiber-optic drone strikes, and that struggle is emerging right
at the point where Ukraine is leaning more heavily into using this type of strike drone than ever
before.

Ukraine isn’t having things all its own way.

As impressive as this shift obviously is,
Palisa notes that Ukraine is only matching Russia on fiber-optic drone quality, even if it’s winning
on volume.

For any other country, that would be enough.

For Ukraine, that is an indicator
that more needs to be done to improve its strike drones to the point where they have Russia
beaten on every conceivable level.

Furthermore, though Ukraine has the overall advantage, Russia
is still maintaining some pockets where its strike drone strategy is outpacing Ukraine’s.

“There
are areas where the Russians are concentrating efforts and trying to create an advantage
in the ‘small sky’ to ensure, first of all, the possibility of tactical success for their
ground units,” Palisa points out.

Still, none of this takes away from what Ukraine has achieved.

This is a massive turnaround on the battlefield, and it’s one that Russia is absolutely desperate
to counter.

Russia will need to find some answers soon.

While nobody expected this shift, there’s a
second drone-related component where Ukraine has also started dominating Russia.

We’ll get to that
second component soon.

On the strike drone front, much of Ukraine’s success is owed to its creation
of fast kill zones that span multiple miles around the fortified regions that it wants
to defend.

Those kill zones are laden with reconnaissance and strike drones, which are
on a never-ending hunt for Russian soldiers who are trying to infiltrate behind Ukraine’s
lines.

Soldiers and equipment get spotted.

Then, they get blown up by drones.

It’s a pattern that
is repeating over and over across the front lines, and it’s the big reason why Russia’s spring
offensive casualty figures are as high as they are.

According to Forbes, Russia’s answer to
this problem is to make use of drone swarms that it believes will allow it to counteract Ukraine’s
kill zone strategy.

Using autonomous drone swarms, Russia believes it will be able to pierce
Ukraine’s drone defenses, thus clearing pathways for soldiers on the ground to conduct assaults.

There’s a certain type of logic to this approach, but it has its faults.

For one, Ukraine is
building more strike drones than Russia.

30% more, if Palisa is correct.

Immediately, that means
Russia’s swarm strategy faces a numbers issue that suggests it could only be deployed sparingly
across the front lines.

Operators are also needed for these swarms.

Yes, they may be autonomous,
to a degree.

But drones still need operators, even if it’s just to get them in position and off
the ground.

Those operators have to put themselves within range of Ukraine’s strike drones.

And that
means they become targets.

With Russia’s proposed counter to Ukraine’s drone advantage being
imperfect, at best, Ukraine now has the license to lean more heavily into the new advantage that it
has created for itself.

As Ukraine so often does, it’s filling in the one gap that we’ve already
mentioned.

Palisa says that quality, though not an outright issue, is something that Ukraine can
improve on the strike drone front.

Right now, it has parity with Russia in that area, and
an advantage in terms of volume.

However, new technologies are emerging on the battlefield
that are turning Ukraine’s strike drones into even more dangerous weapons than they already are.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is playing a huge role in Ukraine’s efforts to pull ahead
on the quality front.

In an April 9 report, Kyiv Post said that the Ukrainian military
has unleashed a new generation of AI-powered tactical drones that are immune to jamming
and are difficult for radars that look out for the electronic signatures produced by drones
to detect.

These new AI drones aren’t just hard to bring down.

They’re also rangier than the strike
drones that Ukraine already has in place.

Kyiv Post says that Ukraine’s next generation of
drones can travel about twice as far as those that are already killing Russian soldiers in
their thousands.

That makes them versatile, as well as dangerous.

And it opens up opportunities
for Ukraine to use its AI-powered strike drones on Russia’s own territory, as well as inside the
occupied regions of Ukraine.

Those opportunities are already being taken, and, in a rare event, we
have a Russian official to thank for revealing the truth.

Ivan Prikhodko, who is the Russia-appointed
mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Horlivka, says that he has seen Ukraine’s new AI-powered
drone swarms with his own eyes.

“The enemy has begun using new drones called ‘Martians,’ which,
unfortunately, have a cruising speed of up to 300 kilometers/hour [186 miles/hour], no longer fly
under operator guidance but are controlled by artificial intelligence,” Kyiv Post reports
Prikhodko as saying, before he added.

“They are undetectable by electronic warfare systems,
and drone detectors don’t spot them.

” There are rumors that these drones are the product of joint
manufacturing agreements with the likes of Germany and France.

But for Russia, it all amounts to
Ukraine having strike drones that can fly farther, hit harder, and build upon the quantity advantage
that Ukraine has just established.

Speaking of flying farther, a big problem gets even
worse for Russia.

In an April 8 piece, United24 Media reported that Ukraine has also
been working on a new type of FPV drone that is capable of striking deeper behind Russian lines.

Again, that system is reportedly already in use, and it has been captured on video by Russia’s
elite Rubicon drone unit.

The footage shows us that Ukraine has started adding aerodynamic
wings to the quadcopter FPV drones that it is using against Russia.

Those wings provide
additional lift, which in turn reduces the amount of energy needed to keep the drones airborne.

Less
energy used leads to more time spent in the sky, and more time in the sky means the drones can
cover a greater distance than they could before.

It’s a solution so simple that it’s ingenious.

Basic aerodynamics, combined with what Ukraine already has, is creating a brand-new threat for
Russia.

Add these new FPV drones to the AI-powered swarms striking the occupied territories and the
advantage that Ukraine now has on the strike and fiber-optic drone fronts, and you get the recipe
for something that truly terrifies Russia.

The drone war on the frontlines is being won by
Ukraine.

And that isn’t the only win that Ukraine has scored on the drone front.

But before we go
deeper into that, you’re watching The Military Show.

There’s a lot more where this comes from, so
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So, Ukraine is winning the drone
war on the front lines.

Putin would at least hope that Russia could maintain its advantage in the
deep strike category.

At least that way, Russia’s terrorization of Ukraine’s cities and civilians
could give its soldiers an edge on the ground.

But there’s bad news, Putin.

Not only is Ukraine
outgunning Russia in the drone war being waged on the frontlines, but it’s also coming out on top
in long-range strikes.

And Ukraine’s deep strike strategy is all about destroying the Russian war
machine from the inside, rather than using the same terroristic tactics that Putin employs.

On April 6, United24 Media reported that the previous March was the first month since Putin
launched his invasion that Ukraine fired more drones at Russia than Russia managed to launch
at Ukraine.

Bearing in mind that the figures can be colored by the propaganda that each nation
wants to put forth, Ukraine’s Air Force reports that it had to defend itself against 6,462 of
Russia’s drones in March.

About 90% of those drones were intercepted or otherwise suppressed,
Ukraine says.

As for Russia’s Ministry of Defense, it claims that the country’s air defenses shot
7,347 Ukrainian drones out of the sky.

Of course, Russia is acting like it has a 100% success rate
against Ukraine’s drones.

It obviously doesn’t, and this revelation isn’t the flex that Russia’s
Defense Ministry believes it to be.

Shot down or not, Ukraine launched almost 900 more long-range
drones than Russia.

Another quantity disparity is rearing its head.

And it’s a disparity
that is clearly in Ukraine’s favor.

Making matters even worse for Russia is that the 6,462
drones that it launched were a record for 2026.

It was 28% higher than the number of drones Russia
launched in February, which, in turn, had been an increase over the number of drones that Russia
launched in January.

Russia also launched 52% fewer missiles against Ukraine in March than
it did in February, which suggests that Putin’s forces were trying to compensate for lower missile
output with more drones.

If that was the case, then Ukraine has just casually shattered Russia’s
2026 drone record.

Another advantage is slipping away for Putin, and this is a big one.

Russia’s
long-range campaign was calculated, dangerous, and very much designed to terrorize Ukraine’s
civilians.

We saw that during the past winter, when Russia ramped up its long-range strikes
as temperatures inside Ukraine dropped as low as -4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Russia used that
opportunity to hit Ukraine’s heating and power infrastructure as hard as it could, which forced
Ukraine’s people to endure a harsher winter than normal.

Russia’s long-range strikes have also
been increasing in volume and frequency since the war began.

The New Voice of Ukraine has the
figures, noting that Russia carried out 3,010 drone attacks in 2022.

The next year, that number
nearly doubled to 6,011.

In 2024, it was 15,955, and 2025 brought with it 26,327 drone attacks.

These numbers represent a consistent escalation of long-range drone strikes that the outlet notes
cost 2,132 Ukrainian civilians their lives in the first 11 months of 2025 alone.

Another 10,522 had
been wounded by December, and those numbers add to horrifying civilian casualty statistics for the
war as a whole.

Ukraine is countering Russia’s deep strikes.

But before we cover that, Ukraine is
also fighting fire with fire.

Where Putin targets civilians, Ukraine is breaking records with long
and medium-range drone strikes that are surpassing what Russia can muster and destroying key
equipment and military infrastructure.

Russia’s air defenses are a particular target, and they
have been for a long time now.

In 2025 alone, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, wiped out
a staggering $4 billion worth of Russian air defense equipment.

This systematic destruction of
Russia’s air defenses has carried on into 2026, as a soldier with the callsign Schulz told the
Kyiv Independent in March.

“We gradually chip away at the entire rock and try to exhaust their air
defense capabilities in order to expand this kill zone for their production facilities, enterprises,
equipment, headquarters, and so on,” says Schulz, who is part of the 413th Regiment of Ukraine’s
Unmanned Systems Forces.

And he’s not wrong.

Between June 2025 and March 2026, almost a
third of Ukraine’s verified attacks across Russia and the occupied territories targeted air
defense infrastructure, with even more focused on Russia’s anti-access and aerial denial assets.

Groundwork was being laid with these types of strikes.

And now that Russia’s air defenses
are in a worse state than they’ve ever been, Ukraine is taking advantage.

That’s why we’re
now seeing Ukraine launch more long-range drones than Russia.

It’s not that Ukraine didn’t have the
numbers in the past.

What Ukraine wanted to do was make sure those numbers counted for something when
they’re unleashed.

Russia’s long-range attacks are scattershot.

Ukraine’s deep strikes are surgical,
and they’re made possible because it has spent months carving through Russia’s air defenses.

And
the outcome of all of this… Let’s just say that Russia is feeling the burn.

A series of strikes
that Ukraine has conducted against Russia’s Baltic oil terminals throughout March and into April has
destroyed oil storage units and shut down a pair of ports that are jointly responsible for 40%
of Russia’s oil exports.

With oil prices having shot up in the wake of Operation Epic Fury in
Iran, these strikes couldn’t be better timed.

They have cut off Russia’s oil lifeline right at
the point when Putin and his Kremlin cronies were in the best position to profit from it they have
been in for years.

Ukraine has already cost Russia about $1 billion in oil revenue due to these
attacks, TVP World reports, and they were made possible by Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s air
defenses.

Ukraine is now unleashing its “flying sanctions” at a rate that Putin could never have
expected.

Long-range drones are bringing the war that Russia started right back home, which in
turn places political pressure on Putin.

Russia was supposed to sweep through Ukraine during the
“special military operation.

” But not only has Ukraine been batting Russia back for over four
years, but it’s now ahead of Russia on both the strike and long-range drone fronts.

Even those as
close to Putin as former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu are dropping “bombs” with statements that
acknowledge that the war against Ukraine hasn’t gone to plan.

“If these reactions continue to be
ignored, the tightening of control and accumulated frustration could eventually trigger an explosion
in one region — and then a chain reaction,” says Oleksii Melnyk, who is the Co-Director of Foreign
Policy and International Security Studies at the Razumkov Center.

“The ingredients are already
there: dissatisfaction with the authorities, a growing sense of insecurity, and increasing
instability,” Melnyk adds.

The few aspects of the war in which Putin could have claimed to be
winning have been snatched away from him.

Russia falling behind in the drone war is just another
shot to the gut for a Russian president whose strongman image was tarnished long ago.

Even the
drone economics battle is coming out in Ukraine’s favor.

As Ukraine launches more long-range drones
than Russia, Putin is having to deal with Ukraine also creating counter-drone technologies that make
Russia’s deep strikes less effective.

Ukraine now has interceptor drones that cost anywhere between
$1,400 and $2,400, and are more than enough to stop Russian Shahed-type drones, which cost more
than ten times as much, in their tracks.

Ukraine’s drone expertise has also placed it in high demand
in the Middle East, where Gulf states are signing decade-long defense deals with Ukraine so they
can benefit from the expertise and equipment that has been forged from over four years of war
against Russia.

In short, Ukraine is winning the drone war in more ways than one.

On the numbers
front, Ukraine comes out on top in both the strike drone and long-range drone departments.

That doesn’t seem set to change any time soon.

Ukraine is actively scaling up its drone
production.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister, Serhiy Boev, said in January that Ukraine intends
to build seven million drones of all varieties in 2026.

Ukraine also has ambitious plans to open
10 drone factories throughout Europe this year, allowing its means of production to spread to
countries that Putin can’t target without starting a war with NATO.

Ukraine has pushed ahead, and
it’s going to be doing everything that it can to stay there.

The mentions of Europe and the Gulf
states also highlight how Ukraine’s drones have led to the nation becoming a major geopolitical
influencer.

In 2022, Ukraine was a relatively small player that had grain and natural resources
to offer.

Now, it’s a leader in what may be the most important weapons of the 21st century.

Russia
has been well and truly outclassed.

And what does that mean for Putin? We’re already seeing the
answers.

More of Russia’s soldiers are dying as the disastrous start to the spring offensive
in Ukraine has led to those forces running into the brick wall of Ukraine’s strike drones.

Inside
Russia and the occupied territories, air defenses, oil, and every other military target burn.

Ukraine
is becoming a key influencer on the global stage as Putin’s grasp wanes.

And then, there are the
numbers.

Ukraine simply has more.

It’s launching more strike and long-range drones than ever
before.

More drones than Russia can handle.

And as it plans for the rest of 2026, the one
thing we know for certain is simple: Ukraine is only going to get stronger in the drone war.

It
has already crippled Russia’s Baltic lifeline, and Ukraine showed just how impactful its drones
could be by delivering an absolute week from hell to Russia’s shores.

Ports that were once
considered untouchable are now on fire, and the economic fallout is going to be enough
to set Russia even further behind Ukraine in the drone war.

A dangerous new phase of the war
has been entered, and you can find out more if you watch our video.

And if you enjoyed
this video, make sure you subscribe to The Military Show so you always catch our analysis
of the latest developments in the Ukraine war.