The United States and France provided Ukraine with intelligence that helped Kyiv plan drone strikes deep inside Russian territory by identifying air-defence deployments, vulnerable targets and routes to evade Russian systems, the Financial Times reports, citing Ukrainian officials.
According to the report, Western intelligence support helped Ukrainian forces map the locations of Russian air-defence assets and improve the effectiveness of long-range unmanned drone operations.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said the campaign against targets inside Russia relied on the “systematic elimination” of Russian air-defence, radar and electronic warfare systems to create corridors for Ukrainian drones.
After those routes were established, he said, selecting targets became “a matter of pure mathematics” based on factors such as production volumes, domestic consumption, export flows and shipment points.
Brovdi added that Russia’s European territory, along with Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, was now within the operational range of Ukrainian drones. He said around 80 million people — approximately two-thirds of Russia’s population — live in the European part of the country, which he described as no longer a secure rear area.
Ukrainian officials said US and French intelligence also contributed to more precise target selection. According to Ukrainian officials, the intelligence helped Ukrainian deep-strike drone units better understand “where to hit.”
Officials said Ukrainian planners had developed a detailed map of Russia’s energy infrastructure, allowing them to identify critical nodes where disruption could affect larger parts of the network and target equipment that would be difficult to replace.
By Vugar Khalilov
