As the front line in Ukraine calcifies into a bloody deadlock, the future trajectory of the war is being shaped in the skies.
This air war is an all-encompassing contest stretching from a few yards above scorched tree lines to satellites in low-earth orbit. Its physical toll is etched in fire across the landscape by missiles and drones, though much of the fight remains unseen, in the race to deploy artificial intelligence and control a spectrum of radio waves.
Ukraine is using exploding drones to hit Russian oil facilities from Siberia to St. Petersburg and Russian ports from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Day after day, the warehouses of Russia’s largest online retailer are going up in flames, and Russia-occupied Crimea is being plunged into darkness. Ukraine is striking Russia far more often than it did earlier in the war, including attacks with cruise missiles on military targets hundreds of miles from the front.
At the same time, Russia is setting monthly records for its own aerial onslaughts, exploiting gaps in depleted Ukrainian air defenses to deadly effect.
In July, Moscow fired at least 126 ballistic missiles — a wartime high, according to a New York Times analysis of Ukrainian Air Force data. About 400 civilians died last month in Russia’s barrages, which included cruise missiles and drones, making it the deadliest month since April 2022.
